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Korean is hard to establish for its long history of contact with Chinese and Japanese. According to the Southern theory, Korean belongs to the Austronesian language family. However, according to the Northern theory, Korean is a member of the Altaic language family. 

Beginning in the 5th century, the Korean language was originally written in hanja, borrowed Chinese characters. The decision to develop an unique alphabet that could be used by all the Korean peoples was revolutionary at that time. Before this, only Korea’s upper class utilized hanja because they were educated to read and write in Chinese.

Korean people adopted ‘hanzi’ from China to write ‘hanja’ referring to Korean words of Chinese origin. The use of Chinese characters brought a large number of loanwords into the Korean language with the result that  more than half of Korean vocabulary is made up of borrowings from Chinese. The characters used in Korean (hanja) look similar to traditional Chinese characters than simplified Chinese characters and they typically have similar meanings. For example, ‘書’ is hanja in Korean which means writing and reading, and in Chinese, it is the traditional characters which mean book. 

However, the family tree of Korean is still controversial, which need linguists to research more.

Turkish is in the Altay branch of the Ural-Altaic linguistic family, which is in the same linguistic family as languages as Finnish and Hungarian. Other languages in the Altay branch include Tatar, Kazakh, and Dolgan. Turkish can be further classified to the South-West/Oghuz group. Other members of the Oghuz group include Azerbaijani (Western), Gaguaz (Western), and Turkmen (Eastern).

Turkish used to be written in the Perso-Arabic alphabet until the language was replaced with Latin alphabet, as a part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's reforms in the 1920s. There were a lot of Arabic and Persian vocabulary in the language, with traces of grammatical influences. Arabic, French, and Persian provided many loanwords to Ottoman Turkish, before the words were officially related with Turkish counterparts. For example: the word for south in Arabic is جنوب cenûb, which was adopted into cenup in Ottoman Turkish, but now is güney. Another word is cloth, which is البسه elbise* in Arabic, which was adopted into elbise in Ottoman Turkish, but is now giysi, in modern-day Turkish. Many loanwords in French still are used in modern-day Turkish. The word for solution is also solution in French, which was adapted into solüsyon, but now çözelti. Status in English, is statut in French, which was adapted to statü, but now durum. 

During the reform, these Arabic / Persian loanwords were replaced with new derivations of Turkic roots, which created a generational divide between the youth and elderly at the time of its' implementation. In recent years, the Turkish Language Association (TDK) are still coming up with new words and concepts, mostly derived from the English language, which is really interesting to me that there is still an active association establishing these things. Knowing that Turkish has gone through these changes, it gives me an insight on the roots of the language and culture, which was influenced by so many different languages/cultures from different regions. 

Languages evolve over time and adapt based on the changes of the surrounding world. As shown in Turkish, there are cultural and outer influences from other places/languages, but there are also internal changes where the TDK and the Atatürk reforms initiate some form of change. 

We are currently working on becoming more comfortable with building sentences, utilizing the right grammatical rules, and expanding our vocabulary. We have learned how to ask questions, answer accordingly, and use sentence structures utilizing particles. In combination with learning these important structural aspects of Hangul, we have learned ten new verbs and ten new nouns. Since the sentences are getting more complex and the words are getting harder to understand and say, I asked Seonghye to send me recordings of them. This helps me to have more repetition and to be exposed to Korean more. I also added a Korean keyboard on my phone, so now I try to write different words to practice whenever I am having some downtime or when waiting for someone. These two new tools have helped me to get more used to reading, writing, speaking, and listening to Korean and they have been very effective in improving my progress and helping me learn. I am planning on attempting to read a children’s book in Hangul over spring break and to eventually move to books about traveling Korea, because that is what I am most interested in.

 Language family is really important during the process of learning a new language because with this knowledge, I can gain a quick grasp of the relationships between languages and it is able to help me know about another language in the same group too. I think my target language, Korean, is in Altaic language family. Although Chinese, my first language, is included in a completely different family, it made a huge influence on Korean since long time ago. In other words, Korean was created based on Chinese. Even now, I learned a lot of Korean words which sound really similar with Chinese. For example, describing the date of the week uses Chinese way. Also, at the same time, I learned Japanese before which is also a member of Altaic language family. There are a lot of similarities existing among these three languages. So these languages that I know about are in the best position to help me learn Korean better and faster.

But as the time goes by, the language actually changes over time. For example, Korean’s sound changes a lot compared with the beginning stage of Korean. And at the same time, as the society develops and changes, there are a lot of new words have been created by young generation. For instance, they will abbreviate a long sentence into one short word. People who are beginning learners are not able to understand it. I think these kinds of changes will bring advantages and disadvantages at the same time.

Overall, Korean is seen as a language isolate belonging to the Koreanic language family. However, Chinese has had a major influence on Korean writing and reading during the beginning of the common era. Chinese characters used to be the Korean writing system, called Hanja, for more than a millenium because Korea did not have its own. The majority of the population was not able to read and write during this time period. King Sejong the Great developed the current writing system, Hangul, in the 15th century in order to increase literacy among all social classes. Over time Hanja was slowly phased out. Furthermore, there has also been research about possible common structures of prehistoric Korean and old forms of Japanese, stating that Korean belongs to the Altaic family, but these theories have mostly been declined.

I think it is very interesting that Korea did not have its own writing system for a long time and even once they introduced it, the higher social classes still used the writing system that most people did not understand. This shows a wide power distance in the culture and the importance of social class. In my opinion, it was a very big step for a king to introduce a new writing system serving the entire population. It is also very interesting that Korean is a fairly isolated language with little influences from other countries on the actual language, despite the major influence on the writing system.

Languages change a lot over time, which can also be seen in modern day English. Many “in-words” get added to the language, as well as abbreviations and symbols, like emojis. As languages become more isolated from other languages and people, they develop their own characteristics. In a language family, it is apparent that the languages are connected to one another, but a daughter family can be clearly distinguished from its parent and sister languages. Language trees are utilized by linguists to track the relationships between languages and to identify parent, daughter, and sister languages.

This week, we learned and read about the history and origin of our target language. The Korean language is one that was created by King Sejong, designed for the common people. The written language, "Hangul" was said to have been created in 1443. Similar to most countries in the past, written language was accessible only to the wealthy and upper-class people, who could afford an education. Therefore, Hangul was revolutionary, because King Sejong designed it so that common folk could learn it, which explains why Hangul is a simple and easy language to learn in comparison to other languages.

I learned about King Sejong when I took a Korean history class a while back. Though I do not remember much from that class, this idea and the influence of King Sejong always stuck with me. Therefore, it was also interesting to learn and see the influences other languages had on the creation of this language. Linguists believe that the Korean language falls with the Altaic and Uralic family, with Japanese as a minor family. Since I was never exposed to Altaic and Uralic languages before, I find it difficult to see the relationship with Korean. However, with Japanese, I can see the influence.

There was a period in Korean history, where Japan took over Korea and enslaved the country. I remember being told by my grandparents that the Japanese at the time did not allow the Koreans to speak Korean, therefore for a long period of time, Koreans only spoke Japanese. However, once Korea regained their independence, they were allowed to speak Korean once again, but it was undeniable that this historical event played a major influence on the Korean language, Today, I notice that there are several Korean words that were originally Japanese words. So, looking at the Japanese language helps me understand where some of the words in Korean got their origin from. An example of this is the word promise. In Japanese, the word is pronounced, "yak-so-koo." In Korean, the word is pronounced, "yak-sok." The words are very similar in sound but differ very slightly. 

Understanding the history behind a target language can help one understand and appreciate that language even further. By learning that King Sejong designed the Korean language for the common people, I felt more proud of the fact that I am able to speak such an empowering language. Also, by learning the historical events that occurred in that country, can help one understand how that language has changed over time and become more modernized. I believe that linguists predict the direction of the language by looking at the way minors and youth learn and modify the language. If we compare today's modern language to that of just our parents, we know that the language has changed drastically. With the influence of technology, the English language now has another component to it, a texting culture. Obtaining access to a mobile device has never been easier, with new plans trying to please customers with lower prices. Therefore, these influences have shaped the youth and created a new language culture for the English language. 

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The process through which languages change by developing new characteristics while keeping the ancestral characteristics is called generic classification (Morehouse). Languages change as they interact with other cultures, resulting in the adaptation of the original language through the adoption of new and loss of old words, sounds, and structures. This process is repeated over and over and the original language continues to evolve as cultures intersect. Linguists track, predict, and extrapolate these changes through mapping these languages or shared words in a tree diagram. The example shown in class was the word mother.

Vietnamese belongs to the Austroasiatic language family, specifically part of the Mon-Khmer branch (AWL 2016). The most obvious periods of contact that affected the language is with China and France.

Vietnamese, like many of its neighbors, until the early 10th century BC, was a tributary state of China; Vietnam would offer tribute to the Chinese Emperor in exchange for protection. The relationship between the two, resulted in Vietnam borrowing classical Chinese script called in Vietnamese as chữ nôm for its governmental and scholarly documents (Wikipedia). Chữ nôm is a combination of standard Chinese characters and characters designed specifically for Vietnamese words (AWL 2006). Along with a shared script, are shared vocabulary and proverbs, described as Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. For example, law (法/pjap/phép) and gừng càng già càng cay (the older the ginger, the spicier it is). Approximately over half of Vietnamese vocabulary is borrowed from Chinese and there are compounds that combine Vietnamese words and Chinese borrowings (AWL 2016). An example of compounding is 'table chair' or bàn ghé. Additionally, the Vietnamese system of classifiers is similar to that of China.

When the French occupation of Vietnam occurred, the Chinese script was replaced with a Latin-based alphabet still used today. As a result, French words were also adopted into the Vietnamese language. For example, bia for 'beer' (bierre in French) and ca phé for 'coffee' (café in French). Furthermore, the sound /p/ in Vietnamese only occurs in words borrowed from French.

The relation between Vietnamese, Chinese, and French is important to consider especially in literature and in a more scholarly setting. While there are now words that have replaced some Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, in settings like news reporting, Sino-Vietnamese words are still used for reasons such as they sound more beautiful, correct, educated, etc. Additionally, this knowledge is helpful in understanding the idea of why and how Vietnam developed as a country. Along with borrowing classical Chinese script, Vietnamese also followed Confucius teachings. This influenced many aspects of the culture, including how the individual relates to the state, how parents are viewed, why the Vietnam flag is red and yellow, etc.

If you want to read more about the Vietnamese language, http://aboutworldlanguages.com/vietnamese is a good website.

Turkish is the main member of the Turkic language family, which itself is subfamily of the Ural-Altaic language family. Throughout history, the Anatolian peninsula has been a crossroads for the intersection of empires and cultures. Due to the prominence of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish (or a Turkic language) is still spoken today (although commonly not as a national language) in many of the areas previously governed by the Ottoman Turks. However, besides in Turkey, Turkish is also the (co)official language in Cyprus. Modern Turkish is a descendent of Ottoman Turkish, which itself developed from the Old Anatolian Turkish introduced to Anatolia by the Seljuk Turks shortly before the 12^th century AD. Around this time, Turkish absorbed a great number of Arabic and Persian words. Indeed, until 1928, Turkish was written in the Arabic script.

Modern Turkey (the country) was founded in 1923. Along with its founding came the motivation (stemming mostly from Kemal Atatürk, the founder) to westernize. In 1928, the Turkish republican government replaced the Arabic script with the Latin alphabet. This transformed Turkish, purging many of the foreign elements from the language and creating a “new literary language”. However, there are still many indications of the past relationship between Turkish and Arabic. Around 30% of the Turkish vocabulary is composed of Arabic words written in the Latin Alphabet. For example, in Arabic, the pronunciation to say hello is /mar.ħa.ban/, while in Turkish this is simply “Merhaba”. This occurs frequently throughout the Turkish language and is indicative of the strong past relationship between the two languages, despite Arabic being a Semitic language.

While the realization that Modern Turkish developed mainly in an attempt to westernize, this puts into context many of the challenges facing Turkey today, the most obvious being Turkey’s desire to join the European Union. With the founding of Turkey so relatively recent, national pride is obvious. One example of this is the creation of the Turkish Language Institute in 1932, which not only established basis for “correct” Turkish but also seeks to ensure Turkish as a language develops naturally and free from foreign influences.

Years ago, there was some consternation regarding whether Turkish belonged to a purely Altaic language family, or whether it was in fact in the same family as Hungarian and Finnish. This difficulty stems from the challenge in piecing together a single, mother language from the scattered remnants of the language that exist in out current languages today. From what I gather, linguists have discredited the existence of the Altaic family, opting instead for the Ural-Altaic family. However, within this family, one can differentiate between the Ural languages and the Altaic ones.

During these weeks I learned about different verbs and how to use these verbs with each pronoun. I also learned how to negate these verbs (which is done using the infix "-mi-"). Sometimes when I am reading Turkish it is difficult for me to recognize that verbs are negated because in English this is denoted by a separate word, not by a couple of letters inserted into the middle of a word, but if I keep this in mind hopefully it will no longer be an issue. I also learned about the locative case (using at/in/on), dative case (to/towards), and the ablative case (from), which requires understanding various rules that rely on vowel harmony and voiceless consonants. Using the new vocabulary I learned and knowing how to use verbs, I was able to write and talk about daily routines. Understanding Turkish verbs broadened my ability to write more unique sentences.

    This week, I completed the homework that was assigned to me by my learning partner. She assigned me ~20 questions about the book that we are reading! Since we started reading this book last semester, I had some difficulty with the questions in the beginning because I cannot remember every little detail! However, it got easier as I progressed through the questions.

    I learned a lot of new vocabulary terms through these questions because in order to answer the question, I needed to know what the question was asking! We focused on continuing to learn about the roots of words, so that I can make connections with new vocabulary. One word that we learned about is “seon,” which means ship. An example using this word is “seon-jang,” where “seon” means ship and “jang” means captain. Therefore, “seon-jang” describes the captain of the ship. Apparently, this word can also reference Captain Hook from the movie,  Peter Pan!

    Overall, it was fun to answer these questions because I was able to apply what I read! I’m excited to see what other new things that I learn through these books!

1. Recording:
   Angella's Artifact #2

1. Translation:
   Hello! My name is Angella. This week, we learned about grammar! The first grammar topic that we learned about is another example of a 4-letter word abbreviation, which we also learned last semester! This time, we learned about a word that translates to “perfect condition.”
   
   The second grammar topic that we learned about is the word, “huey” because I kept having difficulty with this word. This word is used for the following terms: festival, meeting, and concert.