post learning journal #7

[Jenna Lee]

Korean language does not exclusively belong in one language family since Korea was historically influenced by many of the surrounding countries. Because Korea was exposed to other countries’ languages, it is considered to be a part of the altaic language family, austronesian family, and the Japonic family. Korea was especially exposed to China and Japan, so it has been the most influenced by those two languages. China, for example, influenced the ancient Korean language, since the Korean language at that time period was mainly comprised of hanzas, and it carried onto even the present times, and it has had influence on definitions and sounds of Korean words. Japan had influence on the Korean language with the grammar. Based on my personal experience of being a native-Korean speaker and learning Japanese, i learned that the two languages have a very similar grammar structure. Because I know that Japanese and Korean are in the same family language, I was able to find the similarities between the two languages, making it easier for me to learn Japanese. And while I was learning Japanese, it refreshed my memory of some Korean words I forgot about, so both languages were helpful to learn and refresh another. I believe the languages change over time mainly due to convenience. Slangs, which are languages used by the younger generation, are words that are usually shortened for another word, and are used for the purpose of convenience. Also, I believe that the influence of other languages also affects how the language changes over time. For example, modern Korean slangs include a lot of the english alphabets and words, and they have definitely changed compared to the Korean language beforehand.