Korejski jezik

Korejski (한국어/조선말, see below) je službeni jezik Južna Koreja i Sjeverna Koreja kao i jedan od dva službena jezika u Kina Yanbian korejskoj autonomnoj prefekturi. Approximately 80 million people speak Korean worldwide. For over a millennium, Korean was written with adapted Chinese characters called hanja, complemented by phonetic systems like hyangchal, gugyeol, and idu. In the 15th century, a national writing system called Hangeul was commissioned by Sejong the Great, but it only came into widespread use in the 20th century, because of the yangban aristocracy's preference for hanja.

Some historical linguists classify Korean as a language isolate, while others consider it to be in the controversial Altaic language family. The Korean language is agglutinative in its morphology and SOV in its syntax.

Names

The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in North and South Korea.

In South Korea, the language is most often called Hangungmal (NB written as Hangugmal, pronounced Hangungmal) (한국말), consisting of Hanguk (한국, /hɐːnguk̚/), the South Korean name for Korea, and mal (말, /mal/), meaning "speech"; the /k̚/ at the end of the first word becomes /ŋ/ by the rules of consonant assimilation in Korean phonology. More formally, it may also be called Hangugeo (한국어) or Gugeo (국어); literally "national language").

In North Korea and Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in China, the language is most often called Chosŏnmal (조선말), or more formally, Chosŏnŏ (조선어).

U drugu ruku, Korejanci bivšem SSSR, who refer to themselves as Koryo-saram (고려사람; also Goryeoin [고려인; 高麗人; doslovno, "Goryeo person(s)"]) call the language Goryeomal (고려말).

In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term Cháoxiǎnyǔ (朝鲜语 or the short form: Cháoyǔ (朝语)) has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian, while Hánguóyǔ (韩国语 or the short form: Hányǔ (韩语)) is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea.