Linguistics 55AC Lecture notes for June 29, 2004 Guest lecture by Wesley Leonard (wyl@berkeley.

edu)

 
Korean
Approximately 70 million speakers ~1,077,000 persons reporting Korean descent (2000 U.S. Census) Genetic classification: controversial (most often classified as Altaic; sometimes suggested to be related to Japanese) Wes thinks it is a language isolate

Three classes of Korean vocabulary:

Sino-Korean (from Chinese): ~69% Native Korean: ~24% Recent Borrowings: ~6%
(Among the most commonly used words, the percentage of Sino-Korean words and native Korean words is about the same; a lot of Sino-Korean words are big words)

Korean Writing
From ~200 BCE, the upper class wrote with Chinese characters (called hanja [hancha] in Korean)
(Note that the Korean word hanja, the Japanese word kanji, and the Mandarin word hnz (Chinese character) are cognates.)

As with the use of kanji in Japan, hanja were used in different ways:
1) 2) 3) Reading a Chinese character with the native Korean word that corresponded to the meaning of that symbol Reading a Chinese character with the Chinese pronunciation (adapted to Korean phonology) of the word Using the phonetic values of Chinese characters to phonetically write Korean (generally limited to poetry)

However, as with Japanese, Korean is an agglutinating language, and Chinese is not; therefore, Chinese writing is not really suited to writing Korean. In Japan, a syllabic writing system (kana) developed. However, syllabic writing would be cumbersome for Korean. Why? -Korean phonology/syllable structure is unsuited to syllabic writing (What about English?)

In 1443, a new writing system was introduced by King Sejong and his associates in a document called:
Correct Sounds for the Instruction of the People Now known as Hangul (Great Script) In his 1443 manuscript, Sejong wrote:
The speech sounds of Korea are distinct from those of China and thus are not communicable with Chinese characters. Hence many people having something to put into words are unable to express their feelings. To overcome such distressing circumstances, I have newly devised 28 letters that everyone can learn with ease and use with convenience in daily life.

Chong In-ji, in the postface to the explanation of the new phonetic script (1446): The bright can learn the [Korean writing] system in a single morning, and even the not-so-bright can do so within ten days. Hangul has been called one of the most remarkable writing systems ever devised in the world. Why? [Hint: Aside from the ease of learning and using Hangul and its overall effectiveness in writing Korean, there is a very specific, very unusual feature about the symbols themselves that is linguistically very clever. What is it?] answered in lecture and may very well be on the final exam
Hangul called an alphabetic syllabary. Though it is actually an alphabet (one character for one sound), the alphabetic symbols are arranged into syllable blocks, following the convention adopted from Chinese (where an entire character corresponds to a whole syllable).

Fall and Rise of Hangul in Korean History -Originally not considered a great script -Banned in 1500 by a regent who had a brutal regime; Referred to as:
Vernacular script Womens letters Childs letters From 1500-1910, Hangul was used and undoubtedly had some level of covert prestige, but the Chinese style of logographic writing was simultaneously used with it in some cases (as with Japanese mixing kana and kanji), and others (the educated elite) sometimes just wrote in Chinese.

What was the significance of 1910?

Japanese Occupation (1910-1945) Nowadays, hanja are used relatively sparingly in most Korean writing (especially writing intended for a popular audience), though a certain set (approximately 1800 characters) are still taught as part of the regular secondary-school curriculum in South Korea. (For the most part, hanja are no longer used in North Korea)

The Korean language in the United States Most Koreans immigrated after 1965.
Why?

Immigration Act of 1965, which greatly relaxed immigration policy and specified that 20,000 persons from a given country could immigrate to the U.S. each year

Note that this is different from Asian languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and certain others that were were-represented in the U.S. prior to 1965.

Most Koreans in the U.S., therefore, are 1st or 2nd generation and most speak or at least understand Korean (to an extent) Korean Church important for many Koreans and Korean-Americans Konglish a language variety with a lot of code-switching between Korean and English