Due by 5pm on Sunday, March 1: Discussion Post #6 on the Ning
Reflect on the history of your target language. To what language family does it belong? What sounds, words, and structures exemplify periods of contact with other cultures? How do these considerations enhance your understanding of the target language and culture in terms of their associated historical origin, development, and contemporary realization? and pragmatic questions of usage? How do languages change over time? How do linguists track, predict, and extrapolate these changes?
Replies
One theory places Korean as a language isolate meaning that it has no demonstrable relationship with any other languages. The “Southern theory” the Korean language belongs to the Austronesian language family which refers to languages widely spoken throughout Taiwan, the Malay Peninsula, Maritime Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Another more widely supported theory known as the “Northern theory” suggests that Korean is a member of the Altaic language family. The Altaic language family is a hypothetical language family that would include Tungusic, Mongolian, and Turkic language families. This language family may also possibly include Ainu, Japonic, and Koreanic languages. This language family gets its name from the Altai mountain range in the center of Asia. It is important to note that this language family hypothesis is rejected by many linguists. The Altaic language family was first proposed in the 18th century but lost most of its support in the 1960s after comparative linguists invalidated the cognates between the languages. One more theory suggests Korean and Japanese are the most closely related suggesting that Korean belongs to the Japonic group of languages.
The Korean alphabet is special in that it was created specifically in 1446 under the original name Hunmin chong-um by King Sejong during the Chosun Dynasty. The alphabet is very scientific and efficient. The alphabet was created so that the common people could become literate and learn how to read and write instead of just the upper-class who were using many Chinese characters as the written and spoken language. The influence of Chinese in Korea was seen in the early written word before the creation of Hangul. Before Hangul, the scholars and upper-class well educated individuals used Chinese script for written words. This left the common people unable to read or write. According to the Asia Society, roughly half of Korean vocabulary is composed of words derived from Chinese. Chinese characters used in Korea are called hanja. Korean and Japanese share quite a few grammatical similarities as they both use the subject-object-verb (SOV) sentence structure. Both languages also use particles as topic markers. This concept was completely new to me as a native English speaker.
Knowing the historical origins of Korean helps me understand how complex a language it is and gives me a sense of appreciation for Korean. I think thinking about what language family Korean is closely related to will help me understand its grammar a bit better and be able to make connections to other languages such as Japanese and Mandarin. Sadly, I have never studied Manadarin or Japanese before.
According the the article on Anatolia, linguists tracked this family by starting with looking at vocabulary items that are resistant to linguistics change which in this case were pronouns, parts of the body, and family relations. Linguists also use computational methods which help sort through the large amount of vocabulary. Using comparative methods linguists can predict phonological rules and track language changes.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages
https://blog.thelinguist.com/2017/10/10/difference-chinese-japanese...
https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/korean/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_languages
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/9249339/Similarities-between-Jap...
http://linguistics.byu.edu/classes/Ling450ch/reports/Korean3.html
Sign language is a language that is unique to the realm of language families. As far as I know, the language itself, and all forms of sign language, do not fall under a specific language family. However, despite the fact that it does not fall into a language family, much of American sign language had been standardized and created following French sign language. So, although American sign language utilizes English spelling and English words, the sign order of sentences in ASL resembles that of the French language.
The history of sign language in America is an interesting one because sign language was not standardized until 1817. Before this time, different deaf communities had their own vernaculars or forms of the language. For example, the sign for goat might have been different in one deaf community compared to another. A famous example of such occurred in Martha’s Vineyard in the early 18th century. A form of sign language had developed entirely within the Vineyard and had been labeled as Martha's Vineyard Sign Language. However, since the standardization of the language, I believe that many of these vernaculars have disappeared because, in a world where the majority can hear, deaf people want to be able to communicate with those that are like them. If these deaf communities had not conformed to the standardization of language, there would be a divide and miscommunication between these communities that experience similar challenges.
I believe like all language, sign language will evolve over time. New signs will emerge to convey different technologies, feelings, slang and etc. In addition, I recently read an article that described technology being developed that used smart gloves to turn sign language gestures into audio speech. If this technology were to become prevalent and actually work, the whole deaf community and culture could change.
Korean is a language of the Korean peninsula in northeast Asia. Korean’s linguistic affiliation is very difficult to establish because of its long history with Chinese and Japanese. So, according to the so called Southern theory, Korean belongs to the Austronesian language family but according the the Northern theory, Korean is a member of the Altaic language family. However, others say Korean and Japanese are very similar so they suggest it belongs to the Japonic group of languages. However it is classified as a lanaguae isolate so Korean is a member of the Koreanic language family. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in Manchuria.
The Korean alphabet is called Hangul. Most languages changed and developed gradually over long periods of time, so it is hard to tell by whom or when they were created. However, Korean is different because it is one of the only writing system in which the creator and date is actually known. It was created by King Sejong in 1443 A.D. and the scholars of Jiphyeojeon. He decided to create it because ”the language of our nation is different from China, there are many among our ignorant people who are unable to express what they wish to say. I took pity on this state of affairs and made 28 letters to correct it.” Koreans use to use the Chinese writing system at the time but spoken and written Korean were very different so it was hard for many people to learn the complicated Chinese characters.
However, the good thing was that the use of Chinese characters brought a large number of loanwords into the Korean language so more than half of Korean vocabulary is actually made up of borrowings from Chinese. There are surprisingly few Japanese borrowings but Korean also borrowed from English. The borrowings from English have been helpful in knowing more words such as 버스 (bus), 택시 (taxi), 슈퍼마켓 (supermarket), and 커피숍 (coffee shop). There are many more as well. They are said like they are in English but with a different tone(Konglish). This reminds me of how people always say to learn cognates because it’s an easy way build vocabulary.
With Hangul, the basic Hangeul consonants are: ㄱ, ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅅ, and ㅇ. Other letters are created by adding others to them such as ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ. Therefore it is an easy alphabet to learn. Especially because the shapes were created based on the shapes of the parts of the body used to speak. For example. “ㄱ” is the shape of the tongue's root blocking the throat; "ㄴ" is the shape of the tongue touching the upper gums; "ㅁ" is the shape of the open mouth; "ㅅ" is the shape of the teeth; and "ㅇ" is the shape of the opening at the back of the throat. Also the letters of Hangeul were designed in such a way that similarly pronounced letters also look similar, as in ㄴ, ㄷ, ㅌ and ㄸ, except ㄹ is a semi-lingual sound. I actually did not know this part of how Hangul was created so i was having difficulty remembering which sounds correlated to which symbols. This will be very helpful especially in helping me pronounce them properly because I do not pronounce them all as they should be because it is hard to make some of the new sounds I am not use to.
Another cool thing about the alphabet is that Hangul is based on the Eastern philosophy that heaven, Earth, and human are one.Therefore "•" is based on the round shape of the sky, "ㅡ" the flatness of Earth, and "ㅣ" the shape of a person standing. So ”ㅏ” is a combination of ㅣ and ·.
References:
https://www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/korean/
https://zkorean.com/hangul/history_of_hangul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_Hangul
http://www.antiquealive.com/Blogs/Hangeul_Korean_Alphabet.html