Blog Post #6

[Benjamin Reilman]

Korean, like Japanese, shares very few similarities with any other language. Some scholars have proposed that it belongs to the Altaic language family, alongside Mongolian and Turkic languages, however, the connection between the two only originates from a distant shared origin in and around Manchuria. Proto-Korean developed over hundreds of years alongside Proto-Japanese, and modern Korea actually shares some similarities with modern Japanese. Proto-Korean eventually gave way to Middle Korean with the establishment of the Goryeo kingdom (the namesake of modern Korea), and a resulting period of internal unity. Some sources place the development of the Korean language farther back in the kingdom of Silla which predates Goryeo and is more renowned for its contribution to Korean arts and culture. With the fall of Goryeo emerged the Joseon dynasty of Korea. This dynasty would rule Korea until Japanese colonization in the 20th century, and it’s neutrality and general isolation would give it the moniker “Hermit Kingdom.” Korea’s most famous king, Sejong the Great ruled from 10 August 1418 – 17 February 1450. Until this point Korea has had its own spoken language, but its writing was done using Chinese characters. Sejong created the 한글 (hangul) alphabet which for many years existed alongside Chinese characters. But in the 20th century as both South and North Korea emerged they transitioned completely to using the 한글 alphabet. 한글 as a very modern alphabet was constructed so that it could be taught easily, and the language is entirely phonetic as opposed to English. It uses a hybrid structure where individual letters are grouped into syllable blocks instead of individually strung together to form words.