Love for languages – 6
Korean is spoken by about 63 million people in South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Grammatically Korean is very similar to Japanese and about 70% of its vocabulary comes from Chinese.
There are 24 letters (jamo) – 14 consonants and 10 vowels. The letters are combined together into syllable blocks. For example, Hangeul is written: 한 (han) = ᄒ (h) + ᅡ (a) + ᄂ (n) and 글 (geul) = ᄀ (g) + ᅳ (eu) + ᄅ (l)
The shapes of the the consonants g/k, n, s, m and ng are graphical representations of the speech organs used to pronounce them. Other consonants were created by adding extra lines to the basic shapes.
The shapes of the vowels are based on three elements: man (a vertical line), earth (a horizontal line) and heaven (a dot). In modern Hangeul the heavenly dot has mutated into a short line.
Spaces are placed between words, which can be made up of one or more syllables.
The sounds of some consonants change depending on whether they appear at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a syllable.
Here’s an exciting way to learn a new language. Can you drag and drop the translation into the right box?