Korean language

Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean, which in turn descends from Old Korean, which descends from the Proto-Koreanic language, which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria.^[8][9] Whitman (2012) suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.^[10]

Since the establishment of two independent governments, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen. While there tends to be strong political conflict between North and South Korea regarding these linguistic "differences," regional dialects within each country actually display greater linguistic variations than those found between North and South Korean standards. Nevertheless, these dialects remain largely mutually intelligible.

The Chinese language, written with Chinese characters and read with Sino-Xenic pronunciations, was first introduced to Korea in the 1st century BC, and remained the medium of formal writing and government until the late 19th century.^[11] Korean scholars adapted Chinese characters (known in Korean as Hanja) to write their own language, creating scripts known as idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil.^[12][13] These systems were cumbersome, due to the fundamental disparities between the Korean and Chinese languages, and accessible only to those educated in classical Chinese. Most of the population was illiterate.^{[citation needed]}

In the 15th century King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system, known today as Hangul, to promote literacy among the common people.^[14][15][16] Introduced in the document Hunminjeongeum, it was called eonmun ('colloquial script') and quickly spread nationwide to increase literacy in Korea.

The Korean alphabet was denounced by the yangban aristocracy, who looked down upon it for being too easy to learn.^[17][18] However, it gained widespread use among the common class^[19] and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class.^[20] Since few people could understand official documents written in classical Chinese, Korean kings sometimes released public notices entirely written in Hangul as early as the 16th century for all Korean classes, including uneducated peasants and slaves. By the 17th century, the yangban had exchanged Hangul letters with slaves, which suggests a high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era.^[21]

In the context of growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Kabo Reform of 1894 abolished the Confucian examinations and decreed that government documents would be issued in Hangul instead of literary Chinese.^[22][23] Some newspapers were published in Hangul, but other publications used Korean mixed script, with Hanja for Sino-Korean vocabulary and Hangul for other elements.^[24] North Korea abolished Hanja in writing in 1949, but continues to teach them in schools.^[24] Their usage in South Korea is mainly reserved for specific circumstances such as newspapers, scholarly papers and disambiguation. Today Hanja is largely unused in everyday life but is still important for historical and linguistic studies.^{[citation needed]}

The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in both South Korea and North Korea. The English word "Korean" is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as Koryo-saram or Koryo-in (literally, 'Koryo/Goryeo people'), and call the language Koryo-mar. Some older English sources also use the spelling "Corea" to refer to the nation, and its inflected form for the language, culture and people, "Korea" becoming more popular in the late 1800s.^[25]

In South Korea the Korean language is referred to by many names including hangugeo ('Korean language'), hangungmal ('Korean speech') and urimal ('our language'); "hanguk" is taken from the name of the Korean Empire (대한제국; 大韓帝國; Daehan Jeguk). The "han" (韓) in Hanguk and Daehan Jeguk is derived from Samhan, in reference to the Three Kingdoms of Korea (not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula),^[26][27] while "-eo" and "-mal" mean "language" and "speech", respectively. Korean is also simply referred to as gugeo, literally "national language". This name is based on the same Han characters (國語 'nation' + 'language') that are also used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages.^{[citation needed]}

In North Korea and China, the language is most often called Joseonmal, or more formally, Joseoneo. This is taken from the North Korean name for Korea (Joseon), a name retained from the Joseon period until the proclamation of the Korean Empire, which in turn was annexed by the Empire of Japan.^{[citation needed]}

In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term Cháoxiǎnyǔ or the short form Cháoyǔ has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian, whereas Hánguóyǔ or the short form Hányǔ is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea.^{[citation needed][28]}

Korean is a member of the Koreanic family along with the Jeju language. Some linguists have included it in the Altaic family, but the core Altaic proposal itself has lost most of its prior support.^[29] The Khitan language has several vocabulary items similar to Korean that are not found in other Mongolian or Tungusic languages, suggesting a Korean influence on Khitan.^[30]

The hypothesis that Korean could be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin^[31] and Roy Andrew Miller.^[32] Sergei Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list.^[33] Some linguists concerned with the issue between Japanese and Korean, including Alexander Vovin, have argued that the indicated similarities are not due to any genetic relationship, but rather to a sprachbund effect and heavy borrowing, especially from Ancient Korean into Western Old Japanese.^[34] A good example might be Middle Korean sàm and Japanese asá, meaning 'hemp'.^[35] This word seems to be a cognate, but although it is well attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryukyuan languages, in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three dialects of the Southern Ryukyuan language group. Also, the doublet wo meaning 'hemp' is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryukyuan languages. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term.^[36]

Hudson & Robbeets (2020) suggested that there are traces of a pre-Nivkh substratum in Korean. According to the hypothesis, ancestral varieties of Nivkh (also known as Amuric) were once distributed on the Korean Peninsula before the arrival of Koreanic speakers.^[37]

Korean syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), consisting of an optional onset consonant, glide /j, w, ɰ/ and final coda /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l/ surrounding a core vowel.

The IPA symbol ⟨◌͈⟩ (U+0348 ◌͈ COMBINING DOUBLE VERTICAL LINE BELOW) is used to denote the tensed consonants /p͈/, /t͈/, /k͈/, /t͡ɕ͈/, /s͈/. Its official use in the extensions to the IPA is for "strong" articulation, but is used in the literature for faucalized voice. The Korean consonants also have elements of stiff voice, but it is not yet known how typical this is of faucalized consonants. They are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure in addition to tense vocal tract walls, laryngeal lowering, or other expansion of the larynx.

/s/ is aspirated [sʰ] and becomes an alveolo-palatal [ɕʰ] before [j] or [i] for most speakers (but see North–South differences in the Korean language). This occurs with the tense fricative and all the affricates as well. At the end of a syllable, /s/ changes to /t/ (example: beoseot (버섯) 'mushroom').

/h/ may become a bilabial [ɸ] before [o] or [u], a palatal [ç] before [j] or [i], a velar [x] before [ɯ], a voiced [ɦ] between voiced sounds, and a [h] elsewhere.

/p, t, t͡ɕ, k/ become voiced [b, d, d͡ʑ, ɡ] between voiced sounds.

/m, n/ frequently denasalize at the beginnings of words.

/l/ becomes alveolar flap [ɾ] between vowels, and [l] or [ɭ] at the end of a syllable or next to another /l/. A written syllable-final 'ㄹ', when followed by a vowel or a glide (i.e., when the next character starts with 'ㅇ'), migrates to the next syllable and thus becomes [ɾ].

Traditionally, /l/ was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before [j], and otherwise became /n/. However, the inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial /l/ (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either [ɾ] or [l].

All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) at the end of a word are pronounced with no audible release, [p̚, t̚, k̚].

Plosive sounds /p, t, k/ become nasals [m, n, ŋ] before nasal sounds.

Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains the underlying, partly historical morphology. Given this, it is sometimes hard to tell which actual phonemes are present in a certain word.

The traditional prohibition of word-initial /ɾ/ became a morphological rule called "initial law" (두음법칙) in the pronunciation standards of South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial /ɾ/ in the pronunciation standards of North Korea. For example,

• "labor" (勞動) – north: rodong (로동), south: nodong (노동)
• "history" (歷史) – north: ryeoksa (력사), south: yeoksa (역사)
• "female" (女子) – north: nyeoja (녀자), south: yeoja (여자)

The standard Korean monophthongs and their pronunciation principles^[38] are as follows:

^[A] ㅏ is closer to a near-open central vowel ([ɐ]), though ⟨a⟩ is still used for tradition.

^[B] ㅓ is generally pronounced as [ə] when it becomes a long vowel.

However, in Korea, with the exception of older generations in certain regions, most people neither pronounce nor distinguish clearly between the two monophthongs 'ㅐ' (ae) and 'ㅔ' (e). Similarly, 'ㅟ' and 'ㅚ' are sometimes pronounced as [wi] and [we] respectively.^[38] The demographic that maintains monophthongal realizations of 'ㅟ' and 'ㅚ' is reportedly limited to elderly speakers in the Gyeonggi, Gangwon, and Chungcheong provinces. The official standard pronunciation guidelines acknowledge this variation by permitting both monophthongal and diphthongal pronunciations of these vowels.^[39]

In South Korea, while the distinction between long and short vowels is not clearly pronounced in contemporary speech, this distinction is maintained in standard language norms for reasons of tradition and semantic differentiation.^[38]

Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include -eun/-neun (-은/-는) and -i/-ga (-이/-가).

Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include -eul/-reul (-을/-를), -euro/-ro (-으로/-로), -eseo/-seo (-에서/-서), -ideunji/-deunji (-이든지/-든지) and -iya/-ya (-이야/-야).

• However, -euro/-ro is somewhat irregular, since it will behave differently after a ㄹ (rieul consonant).

Some verbs may also change shape morphophonemically.

Korean is an agglutinative language. The Korean language is traditionally considered to have nine parts of speech. Modifiers generally precede the modified words, and in the case of verb modifiers, can be serially appended. The sentence structure or basic form of a Korean sentence is subject–object–verb (SOV), but the verb is the only required and immovable element and word order is highly flexible, as in many other agglutinative languages.

Question

Response

The relationship between a speaker/writer and their subject and audience is paramount in Korean grammar. The relationship between the speaker/writer and subject referent is reflected in honorifics, whereas that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in speech level.

When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer usually uses special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if they are an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if they are a younger stranger, student, employee, or the like. Nowadays, there are special endings which can be used on declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, and both honorific or normal sentences.

Honorifics in traditional Korea were strictly hierarchical. The caste and estate systems possessed patterns and usages much more complex and stratified than those used today. The intricate structure of the Korean honorific system flourished in traditional culture and society. Honorifics in contemporary Korea are now used for people who are psychologically distant. Honorifics are also used for people who are superior in status, such as older people, teachers, and employers.^[40]

There are seven verb paradigms or speech levels in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation.^[41] Unlike honorifics—which are used to show respect towards the referent (the person spoken of)—speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience (the person spoken to). The names of the seven levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb 하다 (hada, "do") in each level, plus the suffix 체 (che, Hanja: 體), which means "style".

The three levels with high politeness (very formally polite, formally polite, casually polite) are generally grouped together as jondaesmal (존댓말), whereas the two levels with low politeness (formally impolite, casually impolite) are banmal (반말) in Korean. The remaining two levels (neutral formality with neutral politeness, high formality with neutral politeness) are neither polite nor impolite.

Nowadays, younger-generation speakers no longer feel obligated to lower their usual regard toward the referent. It is common to see younger people talk to their older relatives with banmal. This is not out of disrespect, but instead it shows the intimacy and the closeness of the relationship between the two speakers. Transformations in social structures and attitudes in today's rapidly changing society have brought about change in the way people speak.^{[40][page needed]}

In general, Korean lacks grammatical gender. As one of the few exceptions, the third-person singular pronoun has two different forms: 그 geu (male) and 그녀 geunyeo (female). Before 그녀 was invented in need of translating 'she' into Korean, 그 was the only third-person singular pronoun and had no grammatical gender. Its origin causes 그녀 never to be used in spoken Korean but appearing only in writing.

To have a more complete understanding of the intricacies of gender in Korean, three models of language and gender that have been proposed: the deficit model, the dominance model, and the cultural difference model. In the deficit model, male speech is seen as the default, and any form of speech that diverges from that norm (female speech) is seen as lesser than. The dominance model sees women as lacking in power due to living within a patriarchal society. The cultural difference model proposes that the difference in upbringing between men and women can explain the differences in their speech patterns. It is important to look at the models to better understand the misogynistic conditions that shaped the ways that men and women use the language. Korean's lack of grammatical gender makes it different from most European languages. Rather, gendered differences in Korean can be observed through formality, intonation, word choice, etc.^[42]

However, one can still find stronger contrasts between genders within Korean speech. Some examples of this can be seen in: (1) the softer tone used by women in speech; (2) a married woman introducing herself as someone's mother or wife, not with her own name; (3) the presence of gender differences in titles and occupational terms (for example, a sajang is a company president, and yŏsajang is a female company president); (4) females sometimes using more tag questions and rising tones in statements, also seen in speech from children.^[43]

Between two people of asymmetric status in Korean society, people tend to emphasize differences in status for the sake of solidarity. Koreans prefer to use kinship terms, rather than any other terms of reference.^[44] In traditional Korean society, women have long been in disadvantaged positions. Korean social structure traditionally was a patriarchically dominated family system that emphasized the maintenance of family lines. That structure has tended to separate the roles of women from those of men.^[45]

Cho and Whitman (2019) explore how categories such as male and female and social context influence Korean's features. For example, they point out that usage of jagi (자기 you) is dependent on context. Among middle-aged women, jagi is used to address someone who is close to them, while young Koreans use jagi to address their lovers or spouses regardless of gender.

Korean society's prevalent attitude towards men being in public (outside the home) and women living in private still exists today. For instance, the word for husband is bakkannyangban (바깥양반 'outside nobleman'), but a husband introduces his wife as ansaram (안사람 an 'inside' 'person'). Also in kinship terminology, oe (외 'outside' or 'wrong') is added for maternal grandparents, creating oeharabeoji and oehalmeoni (외할아버지, 외할머니 'grandfather and grandmother'), with different lexicons for males and females and patriarchal society revealed. Further, in interrogatives to an addressee of equal or lower status, Korean men tend to use haennya (했냐? 'did it?')' in aggressive masculinity, but women use haenni (했니? 'did it?')' as a soft expression.^[46] However, there are exceptions. Korean society used the question endings -ni (니) and -nya (냐), the former prevailing among women and men until a few decades ago. In fact, -nya (냐) was characteristic of the Jeolla and Chungcheong dialects. However, since the 1950s, large numbers of people have moved to Seoul from Chungcheong and Jeolla, and they began to influence the way men speak. Recently, women also have used the -nya (냐). As for -ni (니), it is usually used toward people to be polite even to someone not close or younger. As for -nya (냐), it is used mainly to close friends regardless of gender.

Like the case of "actor" and "actress", it also is possible to add a gender prefix for emphasis: biseo (비서 'secretary') is sometimes combined with yeo (여 'female') to form yeobiseo (여비서 'female secretary'); namja (남자 'man') often is added to ganhosa (간호사 'nurse') to form namja ganhosa (남자 간호사 'male nurse').^[47]

Another crucial difference between men and women is the tone and pitch of their voices and how they affect the perception of politeness. Men learn to use an authoritative falling tone; in Korean culture, a deeper voice is associated with being more polite. In addition to the deferential speech endings being used, men are seen as more polite as well as impartial, and professional. While women who use a rising tone in conjunction with -yo (요) are not perceived to be as polite as men. The -yo (요) also indicates uncertainty since the ending has many prefixes that indicate uncertainty and questioning while the deferential ending has no prefixes to indicate uncertainty. The -hamnida (합니다) ending is the most polite and formal form of Korea, and the -yo (요) ending is less polite and formal, which reinforces the perception of women as less professional.^[46][48]

Hedges and euphemisms to soften assertions are common in women's speech. Women traditionally add nasal sounds neyng, neym, ney-e in the last syllable more frequently than men. Often, l is added in women's for female stereotypes and so igeolo (이거로 'this thing') becomes igeollo (이걸로 'this thing') to communicate a lack of confidence and passivity.^{[40][page needed]}

Women use more linguistic markers such as exclamation eomeo (어머 'oh') and eojjeom (어쩜 'what a surprise') than men do in cooperative communication.^[46]

The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. However, a significant proportion of the vocabulary, especially words that denote abstract ideas, are Sino-Korean words.^[49] To a much lesser extent, some words have also been borrowed from Mongolian and other languages.^[50] More recent loanwords are dominated by English.

In South Korea, it is widely believed that North Korea wanted to emphasize the use of unique Korean expressions in its language and eliminate the influence of foreign languages. However, according to researchers such as Jeon Soo-tae, who has seen first-hand data from North Korea, the country has reduced the number of difficult foreign words in a similar way to South Korea.^[51]

In 2021, Moon Sung-guk of Kim Il Sung University in North Korea wrote in his thesis that Kim Jong Il had said that vernacularized Sino-Korean vocabulary should be used as it is, not modified. "A language is in constant interaction with other languages, and in the process it is constantly being developed and enriched," he said. According to the paper, Kim Jong Il argued that academic terms used in the natural sciences and engineering, such as 콤퓨터 (k'omp'yut'ŏ; 'computer') and 하드디스크 (hadŭdisŭk'ŭ; 'hard disk') should remain in the names of their inventors, and that the word 쵸콜레트 (ch'ok'ollet'ŭ; 'chocolate') should not be replaced because it had been used for so long.^[52]

South Korea defines its vocabulary standards through the 표준국어대사전 (Standard Korean Language Dictionary), and North Korea defines its vocabulary standards through the 조선말대사전 (Korean Language Dictionary).

Sino-Korean vocabulary consists of:

• words directly borrowed from written Chinese, and
• compounds coined in Korea or Japan and read using the Sino-Korean reading of Chinese characters.

Therefore, just like other words, Korean has two sets of numeral systems. English is similar, having native English words and Latinate equivalents such as water-aqua, fire-flame, sea-marine, two-dual, sun-solar, star-stellar. However, unlike English and Latin which belong to the same Indo-European languages family and bear a certain resemblance, Korean and Chinese are genetically unrelated and the two sets of Korean words differ completely from each other. All Sino-Korean morphemes are monosyllabic as in Chinese, whereas native Korean morphemes can be polysyllabic. The Sino-Korean words were deliberately imported alongside corresponding Chinese characters for a written language and everything was supposed to be written in Hanja, so the coexistence of Sino-Korean would be more thorough and systematic than that of Latinate words in English.

The exact proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary is a matter of debate. Sohn (2001) stated 50–60%.^[49] In 2006 the same author gives an even higher estimate of 65%.^[53] Jeong Jae-do, one of the compilers of the dictionary Urimal Keun Sajeon, asserts that the proportion is not so high. He points out that Korean dictionaries compiled during the colonial period include many unused Sino-Korean words. In his estimation, the proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary in the Korean language might be as low as 30%.^[54]

The vast majority of loanwords other than Sino-Korean come from modern times, approximately 90% of which are from English.^[49] Many words have also been borrowed from Western languages such as German via Japanese (e.g. 아르바이트 (areubaiteu) 'part-time job', 알레르기 (allereugi) 'allergy', 기브스 (gibseu or gibuseu) 'plaster cast used for broken bones'). Some Western words were borrowed indirectly via Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Korea, taking a Japanese sound pattern, for example "dozen" > ダース dāsu > 다스 daseu. However, most indirect Western borrowings are now written according to current "Hangulization" rules for the respective Western language, as if borrowed directly. In South Korean official use, a number of other Sino-Korean country names have been replaced with phonetically oriented "Hangeulizations" of the countries' endonyms or English names.^[55]

Because of such a prevalence of English in modern South Korean culture and society, lexical borrowing is inevitable. English-derived Korean, or "Konglish" (콩글리시), is increasingly used. The vocabulary of the South Korean dialect of the Korean language is roughly 5% loanwords (excluding Sino-Korean vocabulary).^[56] However, due to North Korea's isolation, such influence is lacking in North Korean speech.

Modern Korean is written with an alphabet script, known as Hangul in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea. The Korean mixed script, combining Hanja and Hangul, is still used to a certain extent in South Korea, but that method is slowly declining in use even though students learn Hanja in school.^[57]

Below are charts of the letters of the Korean alphabet and their Revised Romanization (RR) and canonical International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) values:

The letters of the Korean alphabet are not written linearly like most alphabets, but instead arranged into blocks that represent syllables. So, while the word bibimbap (Korean rice dish) is written as eight characters in a row in the Latin alphabet, in Korean it is written 비빔밥, as three "syllabic blocks" in a row. Mukbang (먹방 'eating show') is seven characters after romanization but only two "syllabic blocks" before.

Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese (except when Japanese is written exclusively in hiragana, as in children's books). The marks used for Korean punctuation are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns, from top to bottom, right to left, like traditional Chinese. However, the syllabic blocks are now usually written in rows, from left to right, top to bottom, like English.

Korean has numerous small local dialects (called mal (말; lit. 'speech'), saturi (사투리), or bangeon (방언; 方言)). South Korean authors claim that the standard language (pyojuneo or pyojunmal) of both South Korea and North Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul (which, as Hanyang, was the capital of Joseon-era Korea for 500 years), but since 1966, North Korea officially states that its standard is based on the Pyongyang speech.^[58][59] All dialects of Korean are similar to one another and largely are mutually intelligible (with the exception of dialect-specific phrases or nonstandard vocabulary unique to dialects) though the dialect of Jeju Island is divergent enough to be generally considered a separate language.^[60][61] The Yukjin dialect in the far northeast is also quite distinctive.^[62]

One of the more salient differences between dialects is the use of tone: speakers of the Seoul dialect make use of vowel length, but speakers of the Gyeongsang dialect maintain the pitch accent of Middle Korean. Some dialects are conservative, maintaining Middle Korean sounds (such as z, β, ə), which have been lost from the standard language, and others are highly innovative.

Kang Yoonjung & Han Sungwoo (2013), Kim Mi-Ryoung (2013), and Cho Sunghye (2017) suggest that the modern Seoul dialect is currently undergoing tonogenesis based on the finding that in recent years lenis consonants (ㅂㅈㄷㄱ), aspirated consonants (ㅍㅊㅌㅋ) and fortis consonants (ㅃㅉㄸㄲ) were shifting from a distinction via voice onset time to that of pitch change;^[63][64][65] however, Choi Jiyoun, Kim Sahyang & Cho Taehong (2020) disagree with the suggestion that the consonant distinction shifting away from voice onset time is due to the introduction of tonal features, and instead proposes that it is a prosodically conditioned change.^[66]

There is substantial evidence for a history of extensive dialect levelling or even convergent evolution or intermixture of two or more originally-distinct linguistic stocks, within the Korean language and its dialects. Many Korean dialects have a basic vocabulary that is etymologically distinct from vocabulary of identical meaning in Standard Korean or other dialects. For example, "garlic chives" translated into Gyeongsang dialect is /t͡ɕʌŋ.ɡu.d͡ʑi/ (정구지; jeongguji), but in Standard Korean, it is /puːt͡ɕʰu/ (부추; buchu). This suggests that the Korean Peninsula may have at one time been much more linguistically diverse than it is today.^[67] See also the Japanese–Koreanic languages hypothesis.

The language used in the North and the South exhibit differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.^[68]

In North Korea, palatalization of /si/ is optional, and /t͡ɕ/ can be pronounced [z] between vowels.

Words that are written the same way may be pronounced differently (such as the examples below). The pronunciations below are given in Revised Romanization, McCune–Reischauer and modified Hangul (what the Korean characters would be if one were to write the word as pronounced).

* In the North, similar pronunciation is used whenever the Hanja "的" is attached to a Sino-Korean word ending in ㄴ, ㅁ or ㅇ.

* In the South, this rule only applies when it is attached to any single-character Sino-Korean word.

Some words are spelled differently by the North and the South, but the pronunciations are the same.

Basically, the standard languages of North and South Korea, including pronunciation and vocabulary, are both linguistically based on the Seoul dialect, but in North Korea, words have been modified to reflect the theories of scholars like Kim Tu-bong, who sought a refined language, as well as political needs. Some differences are difficult to explain in terms of political ideas, such as North Korea's use of the word rajio (라지오).:

In general, when transcribing place names, North Korea tends to use the pronunciation in the original language more than South Korea, which often uses the pronunciation in English. For example:

Some grammatical constructions are also different:

In the North, guillemets (《 and 》) are the symbols used for quotes; in the South, quotation marks equivalent to the English ones (" and ") are standard (although 『 』 and 「 」 are also used).

Some vocabulary is different between the North and the South:

Korean is spoken by the Korean people in both South Korea and North Korea, and by the Korean diaspora in many countries including the People's Republic of China, the United States, Japan, and Russia. In 2001, Korean was the fourth most popular foreign language in China, following English, Japanese, and Russian.^[73] Korean-speaking minorities exist in these states, but because of cultural assimilation into host countries, not all ethnic Koreans may speak it with native fluency.

• 
  Highway sign in Korean,
  Reunification Highway, Pyongyang, Korea
• 
  Highway sign in Korean and English,
  Gyeongbu Expressway, Daegu, Korea
• 
  Highway sign in Korean and Chinese,
  Hunwu Expressway, Yanbian, China

Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It, along with Mandarin Chinese, is also one of the two official languages of China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.

In North Korea, the regulatory body is the Language Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences (사회과학원 어학연구소; 社會科學院語學硏究所; Sahoegwahagwŏn ŏhagyŏn'guso). In South Korea, the regulatory body for Korean is the Seoul-based National Institute of Korean Language, which was created by presidential decree on 23 January 1991.

Established pursuant to Article 9, Section 2, of the Framework Act on the National Language, the King Sejong Institute^[74] is a public institution set up to coordinate the government's project of propagating Korean language and culture; it also supports the King Sejong Institute, which is the institution's overseas branch. The King Sejong Institute was established in response to:

• An increase in the demand for Korean language education;
• a rapid increase in Korean language education thanks to the spread of the culture (hallyu), an increase in international marriage, the expansion of Korean enterprises into overseas markets, and enforcement of employment licensing system;
• the need for a government-sanctioned Korean language educational institution;
• the need for general support for overseas Korean language education based on a successful domestic language education program.

King Sejong Institute has 59 in Europe, 15 in Africa, 146 in Asia, 34 in the Americas, and 4 in Oceania.^[75]

The TOPIK Korea Institute is a lifelong educational center affiliated with a variety of Korean universities in Seoul, South Korea, whose aim is to promote Korean language and culture, support local Korean teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges.

The institute is sometimes compared to language and culture promotion organizations such as the King Sejong Institute. Unlike that organization, however, the TOPIK Korea Institute operates within established universities and colleges around the world, providing educational materials. In countries around the world, Korean embassies and cultural centers (한국문화원) administer TOPIK examinations.^[76]

For native English-speakers, Korean is generally considered to be one of the most difficult foreign languages to master despite the relative ease of learning Hangul. For instance, the United States' Defense Language Institute places Korean in Category IV with Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), and Arabic, requiring 64 weeks of instruction (as compared to just 26 weeks for Category I languages like Italian, French, and Spanish) to bring an English-speaking student to a limited working level of proficiency in which they have "sufficient capability to meet routine social demands and limited job requirements" and "can deal with concrete topics in past, present, and future tense."^[77][78] Similarly, the Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies places Korean in Category IV, the highest level of difficulty.^[79]

The study of the Korean language in the United States is dominated by Korean American heritage language students; in 2007, these students were estimated to form over 80% of all students of the language at non-military universities.^[80] However, Sejong Institutes in the United States have noted a sharp rise in the number of people of other ethnic backgrounds studying Korean between 2009 and 2011, which they attribute to rising popularity of South Korean music and television shows.^[81] In 2018, it was reported that the rise in K-Pop was responsible for the increase in people learning the language in US universities.^[82]

There are two widely used tests of Korean as a foreign language: the Korean Language Ability Test (KLAT) and the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). The Korean Language Proficiency Test, an examination aimed at assessing non-native speakers' competence in Korean, was instituted in 1997; 17,000 people applied for the 2005 sitting of the examination.^[83] The TOPIK was first administered in 1997 and was taken by 2,274 people. Since then the total number of people who have taken the TOPIK has surpassed 1 million, with more than 150,000 candidates taking the test in 2012.^[84] TOPIK is administered in 45 regions within South Korea and 72 nations outside of South Korea, with a significant portion being administered in Japan and North America, which would suggest the targeted audience for TOPIK is still primarily foreigners of Korean heritage.^[85] This is also evident in TOPIK's website, where the examination is introduced as intended for Korean heritage students.

From Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Korean (South Korean standard):^[86]

• Korean Wave
• Miracle on the Han River
• Outline of Korean language
• Korean count word
• Korean Cultural Center (KCC)
• Korean dialects
• Korean language and computers
• Korean as a foreign language
• Korean mixed script
• Debate on mixed script and Hangul exclusivity
• Korean particles
• Korean proverbs
• Korean words
• Korean sign language
• Korean romanization
  • McCune–Reischauer
  • Revised romanization of Korean
  • Yale romanization of Korean
• List of English words of Korean origin
• Vowel harmony
• History of Korean