If I received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of Korean, I would investigate the relationship between Korean history and the Korean language. To begin, I would research Korean history: when it became a country, the nations that invaded it, and how it progressed. Next, I would analyze the Korean language: when it was created, who created it, and how it changed over time. Then, I would compare my findings and see if there are any correlations between the history and language of Korea. I would be looking for any grammatical structures or vocabularies that were seemingly influenced by parts of history. For example, there are very similar overlaps between some Korean and Japanese words, as well as one Korean and Chinese counting system.
I want to investigate this topic because I’ve heard that learning Korean history greatly helps one’s ability to speak the language. This relates to what we learned about in week 2: how the brain handles language. Perhaps learning the history of a language would help language learners. Overall, my linguistic study relates to what we studied in week 7: linguistic change and periods of contact with other cultures, and how these factors enhance one’s understanding of the language and culture.
Comments
Definitely! There are so many new Korean slang words and English words that are spoken with a Korean accent. As with any change, there is some resistance from older generations, but I suspect that these new terms will catch on as younger generations grow older. So, we can also investigate how American culture has influenced the Korean language and culture.
This is a really interesting idea! History and contact with other cultures undoubtably has an impact on the language. I always thought that this would be difficult to quantify, but I like your approach to finding correlations between Korean and Korea's history. It would also be interesting to see how Korean is evolving today because of globalization and the Internet. In class we also talked about forced versus organic language change (I think someone mentioned how Japan invaded Korea and forced Koreans to speak Japanese), so these might also influence the change in Korean over time.