Talk:Korean language

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The illustration in which a highway sign is labeled as being in Korean actually shows signs in Korean and English.Kdammers (talk) 03:52, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

The illustrations of the letters is incomplete. Since all syllables are written within equal-sized boxes, the letters can vary depending on what other letters are in the syllable. For example, kyok alone looks very different from the way it is written in the word gimchi: 김치. In addition, there is the archaic, stylized but still used ㅏ which is written as a dot. Kdammers (talk) 20:42, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

wow.are you a korean?because i don't know where you get the korean letters Silver baby (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Hello!

Stalin73$$ (talk) 11:02, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

J 103.214.201.49 (talk) 08:20, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Korean work colleagues say they enjoy visiting Finland as they recognize many Finnish words.88.105.147.37 (talk) 17:01, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Sheer coincidence. There is no evolutionary connection between Koreans/Korean language and the Finns/Finnish language - separated by huge distances. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.211.140 (talk) 13:58, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

On the contrary - there exist evolutionary connection that connects ancestors of Finnish with civilization of Liao peninsula which for the most of the historic time to the present times was old Korean speaking world. Tungusic, Mongolian and Turkic are not the only ones that has similarities with Uralic - there are also connections found in Yukagir, Nivkh, Chukci-Itelmen and Eskimo-Aleutian - not to mention Indo-European languages. All of these connections(with Uralic) occurred in different times, but they all follow spread of N1a1-Tat(y-dna) and sister branch N1a2, that connects Samoyedic speaking Uralic people and small part*** of Koreans. ***That small part of Koreans with N1a2 by count exceeds all Samoyedic people with N1a2 at least 100(hundred) times.195.147.206.144 (talk) 02:24, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

There is a possible evolutionary connection between Korean and Finnish through Ural–Altaic_languages / Turanian language-family proposal. However this connection would be very ancient, and likely will manifest itself through structural similarities detectable only by historical linguists after careful study. I agree that occasional words picked up by tourists are probably a coincidence. Selerian (talk) 08:00, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree that it is definitely worthwhile to explore how gender disparity is shown through different speech patterns, but the crux of matter is that the Korean language *lacks* grammatical gender.

Basically, the difference in words or commonly used expressions is best considered a subject of sociolinguistics, not a part of Korean grammar per se. Contrast this with honorifics which are very clearly an integral part of Korean grammar.

I don't mind having a bit of discussion on gender-related issues, but having that as a subsection inside "Grammar" is very misleading, so I moved out into its own section and added a bit of remark to (hopefully) clear things up.

I mean, think about American English. African-American English speakers have a distinct dialect and even some of their own grammar. However, nobody will consider "race" a part of English grammar.

73.162.180.49 (talk) 01:00, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

There is no such thing as "African-American English" - there are only various slang words used in all communities. There is absolutely no difference in grammar throughout the English language - that's absolute rot. 104.169.28.48 (talk) 02:08, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually, there is such a thing: African American Vernacular English 162.247.45.152 (talk) 01:22, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

• @104.169.28.48: Yes, AAVE does have distinct grammatical features that differentiate it from "regular" English. The most salient feature I'm aware of is a distinct set of verb conjugations to convey tense and aspect. Read up on the African American Vernacular English article for an overview. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 19:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

What does 낮 7시 actually mean in korean language? 7 AM or 7 PM? I think it's 7 PM. 139.192.184.34 (talk) 14:04, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion it's rather 7 AM. Surely a ridiculous problem since both 7 AM and 7 PM are not considered as noon. But slightly, 7 AM have a probability to be considered as noon by some earlybirds. But 7 PM is almost definitely evening (저녁). Garypark (talk) 12:14, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

It is a bit frustrating reading this article because it vacillates between using McCune-Reischauer and Revised Romanization. This would be confusing, but at least justifiable, if McCune were used for North Korean transliterations and Revised for South Korean transliterations, and in some places it does seem like that's the convention being used, but then in other places McCune is used for South Korean transliterations! I feel like you need a whole lot of knowledge of Korean romanization already to understand what the hell is going on with these terms. Wouldn't it be better to use one or the other consistently? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.112.182.194 (talk) 21:20, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

As I've explained in my revert rationale, Korean should be areally grouped under familycolor = Altaic for purposes of convenience, a la Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, and Japonic, and in a areally unrelated example, the Amerindian languages, which employ the same familycolor despite no demonstrated genetic relationship. Again, I must stress that familycolor = altaic is for areal purposes.

However, it looks like previous discussions have been inconclusive regarding the infobox color (1, 2, 3, 4) mostly revolving around the inclusion of the primary family being "Altaic ?" in the language infobox. The Verified Cactus 100% 16:00, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

pinging @FreeKnowledgeCreator:. The Verified Cactus 100% 16:03, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

• On the Template:Infobox language/family-color page, Altaic is specified as areal. RobbieM13 (talk) 19:30, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

This document seems to back up the claim about Sino-Korean morphemes being monosyllabic (in the vocabulary section), however, I don't know how to source it. https://blogs.uw.edu/isskl/files/2017/08/ISSKL-2-Song-presentation-01-updated.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by RobbieM13 (talk • contribs) 16:17, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Copied from RobbieM13's User Talk: Hello RobbieM13 I have had conversation with people from New Zealand (kiwi) and Australia who have Chinese ancestor, but I was surprised that they over-reacted and did not wish that Korean language belong to altaic language family. That's because Chinese people have so long been ruled by people who used altaic language family. However, personal emotion and scholastic work is separate thing.

The text books used in elementary, middle, and high school in South Korea still define that Korean language is part of altaic language family, in part, because there aren't many scholars who claim that Korean language is an isolated language. If South Korea does so, English wikipedia citing books from no linguistic background and listing different information will make the site like Galapagos Islands, and give wrong information to many people.

Also, I have a vovin book that was referenced, the referred content was not found in the book. Please understand that false information was disguised as true fact, citing a book that doesn't even have particular content. YOU MUST CHECK IT. IT IS REALLY WRITTEN LIKE THAT OR NOT. You can search about the book that Vovin wrote. It's about middle mongolian. And He wrote that the gender agreement is abandon in middle mongolian language.

Looking at the false contents that contains ideology of certain ethnic group, the English wikipedia users and the management in wikipedia should be ashamed and look back on their mistake. Thank you. --218.149.108.165 (talk) 20:35, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

My response: The claim which is sourced with Mr. Vovin's book is the statement that Such factors of typological divergence as Middle Mongolian's exhibition of gender agreementcan be used to argue that a genetic relationship with Altaic is unlikely. I agree that this is not included in the source material; I emailed Mr. Vovin himself and he said that "Although it increasingly looks like that proto-Mongolic unlike Turkic had gender, and in general gender is a no-Altaic feature, I have never made a claim that it has any impact on Altaic problem because no typology has any say in deterening[sic] genetic affiliation." and so I agree with your removal of that section. I will discuss the amount of weight we should be giving the Altaic theory once I have read up on this stuff, however there have been numerous discussions on both this talk page and also on the WikiProject Languages archives which have all come to the same conclusion; Altaicism is largly discredited.

I'll try to link all relevant discussions

On this page: 1 2 3 4

On WikiProject Languages: 5 6 7

On WikiProject Linguistics: 8

RobbieM13 (talk) 12:37, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Ono Susumu is a Japanese linguist asserting relations between Japanese and Dravidian and Austronesian. Problem is that he is not a specialist in Korean language. His only example for his Austonesian theory is the word "Phuwa" and he says it is a Korean word meaning lung, but this word doesn't exist in Korean. In native Korean, lung is 허파 (heopa).
I personally have tried to contact him to figure out what the heck this is, but he is already dead it is still a mystery. This mysterious word "phuwa" which is of course not Korean, is the only clue supporting his Austronesian theory. Unlike his absurd Austonesian theory, the Dravidian theory is considered "should not be overlooked" by many Korean linguists. A contributor brought the Ono Susumu's kindling again. I ask
1. not to correlate between Austonesian and Dravidian. Treat the two language stocks separately.
2. not to cite the Ono Susumu's old paper from 1998.

Lung is 허파 (heopa) or 부아 (bua) in native Korean but 부아 is almost dead now only used in some fixed expressions like 부아가 치민다. Maybe the word "Phuwa" refers to 부아 (Bua) ? In Sino Korean, lung is 폐 (pye). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 39.7.46.106 (talk) 03:27, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I feel this article should be merged with Korea. Spiritualpick (talk) 18:10, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Koreanic > Han > Sillan > Korean (Jkrn111 (talk) 21:15, 20 December 2019 (UTC))

That was added by a banned editor, and appears to be a Wikipedia-only classification. Kanguole 10:56, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

@ImprovedWikiImprovment: South Korea's population is more than twice as large as North Korea's, so I don't think it's unreasonable to put its name first (anecdotally, Wiktionary also prefers the South Korean variety, since sources on North Korean are sparse at best)—arguably, putting North Korea first implies a preference towards them. I've changed it to prefer South Korea, but I could be persuaded otherwise. –LogStar100 (talk) 15:24, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

@LogStar100: I think keeping it alphabetical, as with other languages, is the best way to go. The size of the country does not seem particularly relevant. The only reason this article deviates from the alphabetical standard is because of the ROK-centric viewpoint of most Wikipedia editors. We have no POV here. --IWI (talk) 15:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

And the case of Wiktionary is a different situation altogether. Using South Korean translations over North Korean ones makes sense due to sourcing, and sourcing only. --IWI (talk) 15:47, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

See French language, and many others for examples. It is an established standard to list countries in alphabetical order. --IWI (talk) 15:50, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Since in the past and even, apparently to a much lesser extent, Korean has been claimed to be or to possibly be an Altaic language, this should at least be briefly mentioned. Footnote readers will find mention of Altaic, but we cannot expect our average reader to search footnotes when normally using our pages.INTRODUCTION TO ALTAIC LINGUISTICS by NICHOLAS POPPE (1965) listed Korean as "possible" (later strongly attacked by Gerhard Doerfer and Andräs Rona-Tas and presented to the panel by Larry Clark, according to Unger, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110886092.479). Koguryo and Altaic - On the role of Koguryo and other Old Korean idioms in the Altaic etymology by Vaclav Blazhek (2009) finds support. Kim, M., & MacNeill, A. (2020). Relationship between the Altaic Languages and the Korean Language. Journal of Student Research, 9(2), https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v9i2.1083 discusses commonalities, leaving the connection up in the air. In 2021, Park sides with incorporation (http://dspace.kci.go.kr/handle/kci/1541524). My point is not to argue for an Altaic connection but to argue for some sort of mention of the idea, which has been a significant issue in Korean-language history studies for over a hundred years.Kdammers (talk) 05:48, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

It is more relevant to look at linguistic overviews of Korean, e.g. the recent book by Cho and Whitman. In such works, it is common to mention Altaic and Japanese as the major proposals, but to note that Altaic itself has lost most of its support, and that a Japanese connection is unproven. So the Altaic hypothesis should be mentioned here in a similar way. Certainly just changing "Altaic" to "Koreanic" as here is unhelpful. Kanguole 09:12, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

The disambiguation page Han#Languages lists the Korean language as one of the meanings of the term "Han". Is this correct? Does "Han" refer to Korean? – Uanfala (talk) 01:17, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

The formatting of repeated references to the same source in this article is currently rather mixed: there are some repeated in-place references (e.g. #29 & #30), some use of {{sfn}}, and some plain-text short footnotes (e.g. #21–#23). I suggest converting all repeated references to the same source to use {{harvnb}}/{{sfn}}, with a separate source section at the end of the reference list, and leaving single-use references in place. Any other opinions? Wham2001 (talk) 12:00, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Since nobody has complained in the past month, I've started on this. Wham2001 (talk) 22:19, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Done – tricky in places given my lack of comprehension of Korean, the state of some of the references, and the usual soup of questionable metadata in online repositories. The article would really benefit from being overhauled by an expert. Wham2001 (talk) 11:24, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

A couple of comments on the gender subsection:

(a) it seems too detailed to be in this article (which should give more of an overview) and seems to have an axe to grind (note possibly judgmental words like 'misogynistic'). Wouldn't it be better to shorten it and provide a link to a specific article (e.g. Gender in Korean) where all language-society interactions could be considered in more detail and with more nuance? I note that this was done for the other two subsections under "Grammar" -- "Honorifics" and "Speech levels" -- both only a couple of paragraphs long and with links to a more detailed Main Article.

(b) it confuses grammatical gender (which Korean almost entirely lack) with gender in non-grammatical context (the social construction of roles related to the perception of biological sex);

(c) its language is often a little awkward or odd -- it seems to need revision by a native speaker of English.

Is there something I can do to help with any of that? I'm kind of new here. --85.149.78.152 (talk) 10:16, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2023 and 11 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Malikamamurjonova (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Nurbekyuldashov (talk) 01:52, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Two things I think would improve the dialects section:

• It's really long at the moment, especially given that we already have a separate article for Korean dialects. I think it could be shortened to like two paragraphs.
  • It should be a brief summary of the main dialects article
• If the content of the large table isn't already in the main dialects article, add it to the main dialects article, then delete it here

toobigtokale (talk) 03:55, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

This phrase in the Dialects section seems unnecessarily wordy:

"originally used by a woman who was the younger sibling in a sibling relationship to refer to a man who was older than her"

Can’t we replace that by this?: "originally used by a woman to refer to an older brother"

My point is only a tiny thing compared to the suggestion by toobigtokale above, but, as it’s about the same section, I thought to paste it right after, as taking care of that suggestion may well wipe out the basis for mine. Geke (talk) 19:32, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

There was a discussion in a korean community that the gender section of this document is a bit conclusive, off-topic and overstating.

We all agree that women's speech is more softer than men’s in korean language, and women tend to use a softer tone, but in most of languages and cultures of the world, women’s speech is reported to be more softer than men's, not only in Korea.

It also claims that higher pitch of speech is deemed to be unprofessional in Korean, so the women in Korea can be deemed to be more unprofessional, but in every culture, lower-pitched voice is deemed to be reliable, because the higher-pitched or child-like voice is deemed to be more immature.

The problem is that it claims general things that happens in human culture are caused by the discrimination against women specifically in Korea, a bit conclusively.

We agree that we use ‘여-(女)’ suffix more than ‘남-(男)’ suffix, but the frequent usage of ‘여-(女)’ suffix is happening in another sinic culture and most of the ‘여-(女)’ suffix words in Korean are directly from those country, and those words doesn’t have ‘남-(男)’ equivalence. People think it’s ironic that the frequency of it is because of Korean culture, but not mentioned in any other documents of sinic languages.

And women in Korean get to use informal honorific ‘해요’ more than formal honorific ‘하십시오’. We agree that this happens because women in Korea are less likely to be in a formal situation(such as in a company), also happening in another country. However, women in formal situation all uses formal speech ‘하십시오’ as well. We Koreans never think ‘하십시오’ as a ‘man speech’ and ‘해요’ as a ‘woman speech’. Also, men don’t grow to use this formal speech. Most of the men in korean don’t even get to use formal speech before they go to the army.

And it claims women in Korea tend to use exclamations ‘어머’, ‘어쩜’ more than men. Which also happens in other languages, even in English(oh my, oh dear, word ending uh). And all languages have phrases that women use more.

People are curious, is it really worth to note things that are general in most languages, stating that those are because of the culture in Korea conclusively. The problem is, most of the things that are claimed here can be written in other language documents equally. And also some of them are not really about grammar. Meteme (talk) 11:55, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for presenting your points calmly. However I don't really agree with your assessment, although maybe the article's changed since your post. The gender section doesn't read unfair to me; nothing it's saying is untrue, nor is it violating WP:UNDUEWEIGHT. I think most readers will know that language has gender differences across cultures and will be able to moderate their interpretation of this article.

Fortunately for your side, a good chunk of the section is currently uncited. Those parts can be cut down or deleted if you'd like. toobigtokale (talk) 17:00, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

For people who can speak either Korean or Japanese, this article may be an interesting topic for writing on the English Wikipedia. It's an orthography for the Korean language created by the Japanese colonial government in 1930.

ko:언문 철자법/ja:諺文綴字法 toobigtokale (talk) 02:18, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia currently has the term 조선말, however on Naenara I see 조선어 instead (). Which one should be used here? -- Great Brightstar (talk) 10:53, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I've seen that as well from various sources: -- Great Brightstar (talk) 21:45, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Hym3242 none of the academy regulation places you added exist in any outside google articles such as the following. Therefore I am removing them given they don't exist.

• The Language Research Institute, Academy of Social Science
• China Korean Language Regulatory Commission

Cookiemonster1618 (talk) 20:05, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

"When first recorded in historical texts, Korean was only a spoken language." ??

It was not written before it was written? That's a tautology... 2600:8800:2C09:3200:ED26:D902:C3B1:9153 (talk) 09:56, 9 December 2024 (UTC)

Unacceptable quality: rambling, opinionated, mostly irrelevant to the subject matter. Should be completely rewritten. 60.240.107.174 (talk) 01:59, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Only the short first paragraph is about grammatical gender. The rest is about language styles and gender. Kanguole 00:03, 15 January 2025 (UTC)