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Sadebugo1
Joined: 11 May 2003
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 Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 5:05 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks so much! It seems from this article that only 35% of Korean language vocabulary is actually Korean in origin. Therefore, all the gobbleygook I had to listen to all the time about Korean being a pure, unique language was just that. What else have I been misled about? Well, at least I can trust that King Sejong singlehandedly created the Korean alphabet, can't I?
Sadebugo
http://travldawrld.blogspot.com/ |
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mc_jc
Joined: 13 Aug 2009
Location: C4B- Cp Red Cloud, Area-I
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Well, at least I can trust that King Sejong singlehandedly created the Korean alphabet, can't I? |
Yes.
However, Korean itself is a mixture of Chinese words combined with Japanese grammar. |
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apocalyptic_tea
Joined: 04 Oct 2009
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 7:27 pm Post subject: |
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| SHANE02 wrote: |
| nautilus wrote: |
| Koreans come from a bear that was turned into a woman. Her first son, Tangun, founded the Korean nation in 2333BC. |
ahhh...thanks for that....
Wasn't garlic used somehow. Garlic is not native to Korea, but I thought the bear ate it or something. |
I think it was wormwood/mugwort.
What gets me is that the tiger pansied out of the whole metamorphosis deal, but is now Korea's national animal. What gives? |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 8:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Sadebugo1 wrote: |
Thanks so much! It seems from this article that only 35% of Korean language vocabulary is actually Korean in origin. Therefore, all the gobbleygook I had to listen to all the time about Korean being a pure, unique language was just that. What else have I been misled about? Well, at least I can trust that King Sejong singlehandedly created the Korean alphabet, can't I?
Sadebugo
http://travldawrld.blogspot.com/ |
Language and ancestry are not the same thing, guys. I am a native English speaker but not a single one of my ancestors was English, they were mostly Swedes and a few Germans. |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Sun Dec 13, 2009 8:46 pm Post subject: |
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My understanding of Korean is that it shares this commonality with English: The vocabulary of English is over one-half Latin and French derivations, but the most commonly used words are Germanic, and its grammar is Germanic. Similarly, Korean's vocabulary is heavily Chinese, but its grammar is Ural-Altaic, and its writing system also so. English doesn't come from Latin, and Korean doesn't come from Chinese, although both are seen as prestige languages.
Korean does not derive in any way from Japanese. The opposite is more likely. The Japanese are probably not thrilled to hear.
It's an interesting article and find. It explodes any idea of innate ethnic difference among most Asian countries, although there can still be arguments of percentages -- how much percent northern Asiatic or south-sea Pacific. But it's interesting that Koreans speak a language which is far more Euro-Asiatic than the origins of most of its people.
But yes, let's put this all into perspective that we're dealing with ethnic migrations of 10,000 years ago or more. |
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mc_jc
Joined: 13 Aug 2009
Location: C4B- Cp Red Cloud, Area-I
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 5:13 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Korean does not derive in any way from Japanese. The opposite is more likely. |
Most likely true.
But then Japanese is also Ural-Altaic in nature also, given the path of migration from China, through the Korean peninsula and onward to Japan.
But there is no denying that Japanese and Korean are similar linguistically and to say otherwise is a distortion.
| Quote: |
| Korean doesn't come from Chinese |
I beg to think otherwise.
Why did Koreans use Chinese (hanja) for over a thousand years before the advent of hanguel?
Chinese has many dialects because it is such a huge country and many of the words that are used in Korean are also found in China. I think the percentage of Chinese words found in Korean is alot higher than you think. |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 5:35 am Post subject: |
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| mc_jc wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Korean does not derive in any way from Japanese. The opposite is more likely. |
Most likely true.
But then Japanese is also Ural-Altaic in nature also, given the path of migration from China, through the Korean peninsula and onward to Japan.
But there is no denying that Japanese and Korean are similar linguistically and to say otherwise is a distortion.
| Quote: |
| Korean doesn't come from Chinese |
I beg to think otherwise.
Why did Koreans use Chinese (hanja) for over a thousand years before the advent of hanguel?
Chinese has many dialects because it is such a huge country and many of the words that are used in Korean are also found in China. I think the percentage of Chinese words found in Korean is alot higher than you think. |
Because they hadn't invented Hangul yet. Writing systems and languages are two different things.
Yes, a lot of Korean vocabulary comes from Chinese, just like a lot of English vocabulary comes from Latin. They are "borrowed" words. But the grammatical structure of the language is completely unrelated to Chinese, the two languages are not genetically related (no other language is genetically related to Chinese actually). Just like English is related to German (and Dutch and Swedish), but not Latin.
If you want an analogy, you can think of it like: Korean is to Mandarin Chinese as English is to Italian.
The reason the Koreans (and most other East Asians too) borrowed so many words from the Chinese is because in terms of writing systems, Chinese charaters were the only game in town. Koreans learned reading and writing from Chinese people, so naturally they used Chinese characters and they ended up just borrowing Chinese words into their language.
There have been lots of other non-Chinese ethnic groups throughout history in East Asia that spoke completely non-Chinese languages but ended up getting assimilated into Chinese culture and losing their original languages. You can see it gradually happening today with Manchurians, Mongolians, and Tibetans, for example (there are many more examples; China has 52 officially recognized ethnic minority groups). A lot of them only speak Chinese now.
The Koreans and Vietnamese are two East Asian cultures that managed to resist assimilation and retain not only their languages but also their political autonomy from the Chinese Empire, and they are both very proud of this and seem to feel a sort of camaraderie over it. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 5:43 am Post subject: |
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| mc_jc wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Well, at least I can trust that King Sejong singlehandedly created the Korean alphabet, can't I? |
Yes.
However, Korean itself is a mixture of Chinese words combined with Japanese grammar. |
No, no: Japanese is a mixture of Chinese words combined with Korean grammar.
Both my statement and yours are retarded but mine has at least a grain of truth in that the Japanese are partly descended from Korean migrants. |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 5:45 am Post subject: |
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| redaxe wrote: |
| Sadebugo1 wrote: |
Thanks so much! It seems from this article that only 35% of Korean language vocabulary is actually Korean in origin. Therefore, all the gobbleygook I had to listen to all the time about Korean being a pure, unique language was just that. What else have I been misled about? Well, at least I can trust that King Sejong singlehandedly created the Korean alphabet, can't I?
Sadebugo
http://travldawrld.blogspot.com/ |
Language and ancestry are not the same thing, guys. I am a native English speaker but not a single one of my ancestors was English, they were mostly Swedes and a few Germans. |
Are you suggesting that the majority of Koreans are descendents of Chinese immigrants who grew up speaking the language of their host country? |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 5:48 am Post subject: |
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| mc_jc wrote: |
| Quote: |
| Korean doesn't come from Chinese |
I beg to think otherwise.
Why did Koreans use Chinese (hanja) for over a thousand years before the advent of hanguel?
Chinese has many dialects because it is such a huge country and many of the words that are used in Korean are also found in China. I think the percentage of Chinese words found in Korean is alot higher than you think. |
Chinese plays a similar role in Korean to that of Latin and Greek in English. Does that mean English 'comes from' Latin and Greek? |
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Old Gil
Joined: 26 Sep 2009
Location: Got out! olleh!
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:38 am Post subject: |
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Korean and Chiense are not related languages, but they do form a Sprachbund, much like Romanian with the surrounding Slavic languages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprachbund |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:45 am Post subject: |
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English does not come from Latin or Greek. German (the father of English), Latin, Greek, and a number of other European languages all derive from a common lost language called Indo-European. It would be better to say that Latin is English's uncle or aunt who paid a whole lot of family visits (with English's bratty cousin, French).
| Quote: |
Why did Koreans use Chinese (hanja) for over a thousand years before the advent of hanguel?
Chinese has many dialects because it is such a huge country and many of the words that are used in Korean are also found in China. I think the percentage of Chinese words found in Korean is alot higher than you think. |
I honestly don't know how much of Korean vocabulary is Chinese-based. I'm puzzled that han and Attila the hun are so similar. But I do think another English analogy may be useful, in that the early English used a Germanic writing system called runic, which was displaced by the Latin alphabet, a superior system. The early Koreans perhaps also had a rudimentary or no writing system and thus used Chinese characters. This suggests a strong Chinese influence, but it doesn't by itself make Korean a Chinese language.
I think the study does in fact suggest that the majority of Koreans descend from the same people who became the Chinese, although they may not have been established as a distinct society or language group 10,000 years ago. I suppose the Mongolians became dominant politically and displaced or morphed with whatever early language was used here, which may not yet have been recognizable as Chinese. Just my guess on all this. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 7:15 am Post subject: |
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| I read that Korean mythology is very closely related to the Ainu peoples of N. Japan. |
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Bog Roll
Joined: 07 Oct 2009
Location: JongnoGuru country. RIP mate.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 7:18 am Post subject: |
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I am in China now and they look the same as the Koreans!  Absolutley no difference whatsoever! |
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shinramyun
Joined: 31 Jul 2009
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| Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2009 8:41 am Post subject: |
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| Bog Roll wrote: |
| I am in China now and they look the same as the Koreans! Absolutley no difference whatsoever! |
It's obvious that non-asian foreigners can't tell the difference between asians. |
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