Learning Journal#6

[Yuqi Shuai]

Learning the History of Your language can help you to understand the root and change of your history and understand how it is different from other languages. Korean is one of the world's oldest living languages, and its origins are is as obscure as the origin of the Korean people. Nineteenth Century Western scholars proposed a number of theories that linked the Korean language with Ural-Altaic, Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan, Dravidian Ainu, Indo-European and other languages. Korean is most likely a distant relative of the Ural-Altaic family of languages which includes such diverse languages as Mongolian, Finnish, and Hungarian. Linguistically, Korean is unrelated to Chinese and is similar to, but distinct from Japanese. Early historical records indicate that at the dawn of the Christian era, two groups of languages were spoken in Manchuria and on the Korean Peninsula: the Northern or Puyo group and the southern or Han group. During the 7th Century, when the kingdom of Silla conquered the kingdoms of Paekche in southwest Korea and Koguryo in the north, the Silla dialect became the dominant language on the peninsula. I understand Korean language has a lot of similarity like Chinese so when I compare those languages I learn it quickly.