Korean language

The Korean language (??? / ???) is the most widely used language in Korea, and is the official language of both North and South Korea. The language is also spoken widely in neighbouring Yanbian, China. Worldwide, there are around 78 million Korean speakers, including large groups in the former Soviet Union, Australia, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and more recently the Philippines. The language is strongly associated with the Korean people.

Differences in the language between North Korea and South Korea

The Korean language used in the North and the South exhibits differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.

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Pronunciation

In North Korea, palatization of {{IPA|/si/}} is optional, and {{IPA|/t?/}} can be pronounced as {{IPA|}} in between vowels.

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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 Hangul, the last of which represents what the Hangul would be if one writes the word as pronounced.

Related Topics:
Revised Romanization - McCune-Reischauer

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Spelling

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

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Both pronunciation and spelling

Some words have different spellings and pronunciations in the North and the South, some of which were given in the "Phonology" section above:

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Grammar

Some grammatical constructions are also different:

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Vocabulary

Some vocabulary is different between the North and the South:

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Others

In the North, ? and ? are the symbols used for quotes; in the South, quotation marks equivalent to the English ones, ? and ?, are used.

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