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Tulisan ini bertema Sejarah dan Perkembangan Bahasa Korea. Bahasa Korea adalah salah satu bahasa utama di Timur Laut Benua Asia. Bahasa ini dikenal juga dengan nama han-gug-mal di Korea Selatan dan cho-seon-mal di Korea Utara.
Bahasa Korea dipakai sebagai bahasa pertama (L1) oleh sekitar 80 juta manusia yang terdiri dari 50 juta orang Korea Selatan, 25 juta warga Korea Utara dan sekitar 2,5 juta warga negara Cina. Juga dipergunakan oleh warga daerah Yeonbeon dan Changbei (Provinsi Jilin) dekat perbatasan Korea Selatan-Korea Utara.
Di samping itu, sejumlah minoritas warga negara di negara-negara seperti Jepang, Uni Sovyet dan sejumlah negara di dunia juga menggunakan Bahasa Korea sehari-hari.
Akar dari Bahasa Korea tidak begitu jelas dan telah menjadi perdebatan panjang. Ada yang mengatakan bahasa ini adalah anggota dari keluarga bahasa Altaik. Namun pendapat ini sekarang tidak lagi diterima karena tidak ada bukti pendukungnya.
Di lain pihak, ada yang mengatakan bahwa Bahasa Korea berasal dari keluarga bahasa-bahasa Austronesia. Namun pendapat ini juga tidak didukung oleh bukti-bukti yang kuat. Ada juga pendapat lain yang mengatakan bahwa Bahasa Korea memiliki akar yang sama dengan bahasa-bahasa Dravidian di selatan India dan Srilanka.
Jadi, Bahasa Korea akhirnya seringkali didefinisikan sebagai bahasa isolat, yakni satu-satunya bahasa dari keluarga bahasa Korionik.
Adapun sistem tulisan Bahasa Korea, yakni Hangul (Hangeul) diciptakan oleh Raja Sejong yang Agung dari Dinasti Chosun (Joseon) pada tahun 1444 M. Sistem ini diciptakan untuk meningkatkan melek literasi di kalangan penduduk miskin dan orang-orang tanpa pendidikan formal.
Bahasa Korea seringkali ditulis menggunakan karakter bahasa Cina seperti bahasa Hangzhou (Hanja) sebelum ditemukannya Hangeul. Namun sebenarnya, karakter bahasa Cina tidak terlalu tepat untuk mengekspresikan bahasa Korea dan tidak mudah juga dipelajari.
Untuk lebih lengkapnya silakan ditonton video mengenai Bahasa Korea beserta transkripnya di bawah ini:
Berikut ini adalah script dari video di atas:
Today’s topic is the Korean language or han-gug-mal as it’s called in South Korea and actually in North Korea it’s called cho-seon-mal.
Korean is one of the major languages of Northeast Asia. It is spoken as first language by a total of around 80 million people.
That is including around 50 million in South Korea, 25 million in North Korea and around 2.5 million in China, including Yeonbeon and Changbei, Korean autonomous areas which are both in Jilin Province, near the border with North Korea.
It is also spoken by minorities in Japan, Russia (former USSR) and numerous other countries throughout the world.
The roots of the Korean language are unclear and are the subject of much debate. Some think it is a member of the Altaic language family alongside Turkic, Mongolic and Tengusik and Japonic languages.
But these days the Altaic language family is no longer widely accepted or shall we say it is unproven. Others think that Korean shares ancient roots with the Dravidian languages of southern India and Srilanka.
There is another theory that Korean derives from the Austronesian language family, but there is no definitive proof for any of these theories. So Korean is often defined as a language isolate the sole member of the Chorionic language family.
The lack of evidence for any of these theories is largely because of the lack of samples of older Korean writing. The oldest samples that we are aware of are less than a thousand years old. And the written and Chinese characters making them hard to decipher.
Old Korean the first century CE marked the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period on the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria. The kingdoms were Co Korea Peck je and Shilla it’s not known for sure just how closely the languages of these kingdoms were related.
They may have all been closely related to dialects of old Korean or they may have been distinct members of the Chorionic language family. From limited information mainly place names it appears that the languages were similar but not exactly the same.
There may have been two groups of Chorionic languages: the Puyo group including Puyo co Korea and puia peck je and the hun group which included Shilla in South Korea. It is widely believed that Shilla is the direct ancestor of modern Korean.
In North Korea it is widely believed that Goguryeo is the direct ancestor of modern Korean during the unified Silla period beginning in the 7th century when Shilla conquered the other kingdoms.
The Shilla variety became the dominant language of the Peninsula. This is the form of old Korean that became the ancestor of middle Korean. Korea has been tremendously influenced by China throughout its history due to invasion attempts, alliances and extensive trade.
The influence on Korean culture includes stunning influence on the Korean language since Korean did not have its own writing system. It adopted the Chinese writing system and used it well into the era of middle Korean. And a huge amount of Chinese vocabulary entered Korean through the literary language middle Korean.
When the Korea dynasty began in the 10th century the capital moved to Kaesong. So the Kaesong dialect became the prestige language. It seems that by this time the Peninsula basically spoke the same language. So this was simply a dialectal change.
The first written record of Korean that we know of beyond place names comes from this time period. The sources Chinese and gives a few hundred examples of Korean words written phonetically using Chinese characters.
One feature of middle Korean is that it featured four tones and on top of that Chinese loanwords still retained their tones as well. These tone distinctions have disappeared in modern Standard Korean, but there are a couple of dialects that do retain some of these distinctions.
We know that middle Korean had tones because there were markings indicating tone in the Hangul writing system which was created in 1444 by King Sejong the great of the Chosun dynasty. Hangul was created to increase literacy among the poor and people without a formal education.
Prior to the creation of Hangul, Korean went through a number of different writing systems that used Chinese characters in various ways to represent Korean. None of which were an ideal match for Korean or very easy to learn.
Iin the beginning, elites and scholars opposed the introduction of Hangul, but over the following centuries it became widespread. Hangul is such an ingenious writing system that it’s really hard to imagine how wouldn’t have become widespread for a long time.
Korean was often written and published in a mixed script using Hangzhou Chinese characters for content words and Hangul for functional or grammatical words and inflections. It was quite similar to how Japanese is still written today.
Speaking of Japanese, Korea was occupied by Japan from 1910 until 1945. During the occupation Japanese was made the official language and policies were implemented that would have replaced Korean with Japanese if the occupation had not been ended.
Japanese was made the language of education except for Korean class and speaking Korean at school was banned. Koreans were pressured to replace their Korean names with Japanese names and Korean language newspapers were ordered to shut down.
These assimilationist policies were gradually introduced and speeded up in the later years of the occupation. Thankfully the Korean language survived the occupation, but a significant amount of Japanese vocabulary was absorbed into the language.
In the decades since the occupation ended, Honja have gradually become de-emphasized in favor of Hangul. Nowadays most texts are written entirely or mostly in Hangul with Han Chaeah mainly used to prevent possible ambiguity between homophones.
In North Korea specifically, Hangzhou were eliminated from all official publications in 1949. It is speculated that the growing emphasis on Hangul was partly a reaction to the Japanese occupation that a growing sense of Korean sovereignty made the Korean people want to use more of their nation’s homegrown script.
The existence of the Hangul script is now celebrated every year on Hangul Day on October 9th in South Korea. And on Chosun cool day January 15th in North Korea. Both Koreas have a literacy rate of over 99%. So there is possible reason to celebrate.
So what is Korean like? Well there’s a lot to say about Korean and there’s no way to give a complete comprehensive overview of the whole language in a single video. But we will look at some of its important features: Tongo.
Tongo is a fantastic writing system that you can learn to read very quickly. There is a basic set of consonant and vowel symbols that are arranged together to form compact syllables.
This says Hangul this symbolism huh this is ah this is mm this is good this is and this is oh this system is ingenious because once you get used to the most common combinations of symbols then you can instantly recognize them. The consonant symbols fall into groups of different letters.
These consonants are velar and the basic shape shows the tongues position in the mouth. This point indicates the place of articulation near the back of the mouth. These consonants are alveolar x’ and the basic shape shows the tongue touching the roof of the mouth.
These consonants are by labial and the basic shape shows a mouth with two lips. These consonants are dentals and the basic shape shows the place of articulation at the upper teeth. These consonants are glottal and the basic shape shows that the place of articulation is in your throat.
Vocabulary in most current examples of written Korean all or almost all of the words are written in Hangul including native Korean words and Sino-Korean words, words of Chinese origin. Believe it or not, Sino-Korean words account for over 60% of Korean vocabulary. Their most prevalent in formal and academic vocabulary, but they’re very common in everyday speech as well. Let’s look at the Chinese vocabulary that appears in the following sentences…(Please watch the entire video to find out the rest)
Source: Langfocus Channel on Youtube
