Understanding Korea materials - Hangeul: 1. Korean Language and Hangeul in East Asia
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Hangeul: 1. Korean Language and Hangeul in East Asia
1. Korean Language and Hangeul in East Asia
There are three countries in East Asia: Korea (South Korea and North Korea), China and Japan. Historically, these three neighboring countries have maintained an extremely close relationship, and that intimacy extends to the present, encompassing politics, economics and culture.
However, each one of these three countries possesses distinctive, native language and writing systems. The official spoken languages for Korea, China and Japan are Korean, Mandarin and Japanese, respectively.[1] As described inCountry | Language | Family/Genus | Writing System |
---|---|---|---|
Korea | Korean language | Korean/Korean | Hangeul |
China | Mandarin | Sino-Tibetan/Chinese | Hanzi |
Japan | Japanese language | Japanese/Japanese | Hiragana, Katakana |
- ↑ [Table 1] has been arranged mainly based on the official or standard languages that are used in Korea, China and Japan. It is well known that there are minority languages spoken in China and Japan, unlike in Korea. Korea refers to
both South and North Korea in
. South Korea and North Korea are two different countries politically, yet they use identical language and writing systems, Korean and Hangeul.</span> </li>
- ↑ More detailed information regarding these languages is available at the website of the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS), http://wals.info/ and Ethnologue: Languages of the World’s website, http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp.
- ↑ More detailed linguistic features of Korean, Mandarin and Japanese can be found in WALS, which explains the main characteristics of world languages. WALS introduces 149 features in 10 areas for Korean, 153 features in nine areas for Chinese, and 151 features in 10 areas for Japanese.
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