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.

Vocabulary

The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. More than 50% of the vocabulary, however, is made up of Sino-Korean words, which are words borrowed from Chinese. To a much lesser extent, words have also been borrowed from Mongolian, Sanskrit, and other languages. In modern times, many words have also been borrowed from Western languages such as German and, more recently, English.

Related Topics:
Sino-Korean - Chinese - Mongolian - Sanskrit - Western languages - German - English

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The numbers are a good example of borrowing. Like Japanese, Korean has two number systems — one native and one borrowed from the Chinese — so Korean, Chinese and Japanese all appear to have similar words for numbers.

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