The Korean language is one of the few Asian languages relatively alphabet based. Despite many other asian languages being character-based, Korean has been structured differently. The Korean language was originally based off of Classical Chinese, after the WWII, Korea took an initiative for reform to fully separate their language from Chinese and Japanese roots and influences. However, hahnjja, the original character-based Chinese/Korean language, still has influence as it helps clarify meaning between two native Korean words that may be spelled identically, or help decipher more complicated words as people are able to break down the word into parts/roots.
Despite being an alphabet based language, Korean is still much different from english, in that a word in Korean consists of multiple parts. Similar to how letters form a word, different parts of the Korean alphabet form a word; however, it is vastly different because words in Korean consist of different parts of the alphabet, whereas English words can be formed up of any letter in the alphabet. So Korean requires a set number of certain parts of the alphabet in order to complete a full understandable word.
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