Learning Journal #2

[Yuqi Shuai]

the language spoken in Korea is called Hanguk-mal, literally "Korean speech." Although the Korean language has adopted many words from the Chinese over the centuries and it seems to resemble Japanese grammatically, its phonetic system differs completely. Korean is not a tonal language like Chinese and Vietnamese, where tonal inflection can change the meaning of words. In Korean the form and meaning of root words remains essentially unchanged regardless of the tone of speech. There is little variation in accent and pitch. When speaking Korean, the general rule is to evenly stress phrases and sentences. When reading or speaking questions, the inflection is upward at end of the sentence just as in English.