한국어: The Korean Language

The following post is written by my first-ever "guest blogger," Anna! Anna is currently living and teaching English in South Korea and has graciously agreed to share a bit of her knowledge of the Korean language with us. Thanks, Anna! 

The only thing I knew about Korea before moving here was that it had this “insane” looking language.  I remember looking at the letters and thinking it was like some alien language from Star Trek.  I couldn’t believe that 99% of Koreans were literate! 

Korean (한국어/한국말) is the only East Asian language where an alphabet dominates their writing.  Japanese also uses an alphabet but if you go to Japan you’ll notice that most things are written in Chinese characters.  In Korea, 99% of all the signage, books, newspapers, and even much of the calligraphy, use an alphabet.  The Korean alphabet is called Hangeul (한글).

King Sejong, also known as “Sejong the Great”, invented Hangeul. He is my hero. Hangeul is a set of symbols (letters) that represent the phonetic sounds in Korean.  This is a great departure from Hanja, (modified Chinese characters, read using Korean pronunciation) which is obviously difficult to learn to both read and write. 

“Hanja” in Chinese characters (top) and in Hangeul (bottom)

The alphabet is purposely simple, so that even the poorest person in Korea can become literate.   The coolest part about Hangeul is that it doesn’t work like most other alphabets in the world.  It does it’s own thing, placing each bundle of sounds (morphemes for you linguists) in it’s own “box.” Here is how to say “hello” in Korean: 안녕하세요 =  /안(an)녕(nyeong)하(ha)세(se)요(yo)/ The fact that a good half of Korean words are Chinese derivatives from long, long ago makes this system of stacking sounds to create syllables really useful.  Often, in the subway, I see the number of Chinese characters line up with the number of syllables in Korean (usually names of places).  Koreans are proud of their writing system, and proud to be unique among their neighbors.

The Korean language also reflects a huge, very important worldview of Koreans. Every person has a relationship to the speaker, and a relationship to each other.  These relationships are incredibly important when speaking Korean. 

Here is an example from my everyday life:

Students-to-teacher: 안넝하세요! (Hello/Hi “formal”)

Teacher-to-student: 안녕! (Hello/Hi “informal”)

If a student says the short form to me I get upset and usually they are joking and go “annyeong... [my angry face] HASEYO!”

There are many other ways to say this, the 4^th one I’ve only heard on a commercial:

안녕하십시오. [an-nyeong-ha-ship-shi-oh]

안녕하십니까. [an-nyeong-ha-shim-ni-kka]

안녕하세요. [an-nyeong-ha-sey-yo]

안녕해요. [an-nyeong-hey-oh]

안녕. [an-yeong]

Usually you can bet that the longest version is the most formal/honorific.  The shortest forms are the most informal/intimate. 

Both nouns (titles) and verbs have honorific forms.  There are 7 levels of honorifics in the grammar of verbs.  Some verbs are also replaced when speaking to elders/someone in the category of “above” the speaker. What this means to me when studying this language is that I need to forget my old way of seeing the world, and adopt the Korean one. (This is true even in the basic sentence structure.  Verbs go last in Korean, no exception.  You have to train your mind to think about what the verb does, affects, before thinking about the verb itself.)  For a Western mind, it’s a bit tiring. 

Another thing I have found interesting is the minimal use of names and pronouns paired with the emphasis on titles.  You address people by title, not by name.  If you use their name, you add the title at the end.  When I teach family words, and my students draw their family trees, most don’t know the names of their aunts, uncles or grandparents.  They simply call them “aunt” “uncle” “grandpa.”  I for one don’t know my bosses’ names.  They are simply “principal” and “vice-principal” to me. To call them by their names would be very disrespectful, both on the basis of work relationship and age. 

There are so many more things I could go on about regarding the Korean language.  I am still in the beginning of this linguistic journey, and each new discovery is beautiful to me.  I have studied many languages and this is my favorite.  It keeps me on my toes, entertained and challenged.  It is changing the way I see things, the way I think.  It is also the native tongue of my neighbors, clerks, students, coworkers, friends and boyfriend.  Maybe this means I’m a bit biased, but I think you should take my word for it anyway – 한국어는 아름다워 (Korean is  beautiful.)