The Korean Language: Spoken by Over 75 Million People

Korean, a language spoken by a vast population of more than 75 million individuals, finds its primary home in South Korea, with 48 million speakers, and North Korea, where 24 million use it. Additionally, there are over 2 million Korean speakers in China, approximately 1 million in the United States, and around 500,000 in Japan. Korean serves as the official language in both South Korea (Republic of Korea) and North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). While there exist some minor variations in spelling, alphabetization, and vocabulary choice between the two Koreas, including differences in the names of letters, both largely adhere to the unified standards established by the Korean Language Society in 1933.

Exploring Korean's Linguistic Roots

While there is a substantial body of knowledge about Middle Korean, which was spoken in the 15th century when the Korean script was invented, information about the language before that era remains limited. A few hundred words from early Middle Korean were documented using Chinese phonograms in vocabularies compiled as far back as 1103. An even earlier form of the language, referred to as Old Korean, has been deduced from place names and a collection of 25 poems known as hyangga, which date as far back as the 10th century and reflect the language of the Silla kingdom. These poems were written using Chinese characters to represent Korean meanings and sounds, making their interpretation challenging and subject to debate.

Furthermore, the relationship between Korean and other languages is a topic of ongoing discussion. The most commonly proposed connections include Japanese and languages within the Altaic group, such as Turkic, Mongolian, and particularly Tungus (Manchu-Jurchen).

The Challenge of Transcribing Korean

When Korean words are transcribed into English and other languages, various spelling conventions are employed, as exemplified by the diverse spellings of a common Korean surname: I, Yi, Lee, Li, Ree, Ri, Rhee, Rie, Ni, and more. Among English speakers, the McCune-Reischauer system is a popular choice for transcription, representing words more or less as they sound to the American ear. While somewhat cumbersome, this system is used in this description, and under this system, the common surname is written as Yi, pronounced like the English letter "e." In academic contexts and for a more accurate representation of Korean orthography without diacritics to mark vowel distinctions, the Yale romanization system is often preferred by linguists.