Currently, Korean is under the Koreanic family and Jeju language used in Jeju-do. The history of Korean has been influenced by many other countries. Especially, the Chinese characters, Hanja, entered Korea in the 1st century BC, becoming the main source of language for writing. But Korea’s own alphabetic characters, Hangul, were created by King Sejong the Great in the 15th century to fully portray Korean when writing and aid reading and writing Hanja. Korean also relates to Japanese as there are a lot of overlapping words and grammatical factors. We are also able to spot the influences of English and other Western vocabularies used in Korea. Following the Korean War, there is a noticeable difference between South and North Korean languages within Korea. Also, depending on the area of Korea, there are different accents and dialects.
Knowing the history of Korean enhances my learning of the language, as I am able to know the difference depending on where the words originated. I am also able to know more of the traditional words through Hanja. I believe that I am also able to improve my fluency as the Japanese and Western vocabularies are typically used for slang terms. Not only the language, but I am also able to learn the cultural and historical factors that have been influenced by these countries.
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