Korean language

The Korean language (Korean: 조선말) is an East Asian language spoken by about 77 million people. It is a member of the Koreanic language family and is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Ukraine, and Central Asia.

Quotes

• Koreans are wonderfully tolerant of a foreigner with differing views when the discussion is in Korean, and no foreigners of importance are around. They lose their tempers when they see someone exporting information which — however widely discussed in the Korean press — is thought best kept "in country."
  • Brian Reynolds Myers, "Portrait of the Ally as an Intermediary" (23 March 2018), Sthele Press

• Korean sounds like ack-ack fire, every syllable has a primary accent: YO-YO CAMP STOVE HAM HOCK DIP STICK DUCK SOUP HAT RACK PING-PONG LIP SYNC!!!! ... Their language is unrelated to Chinese or Japanese, closer, in fact, to Finnish and Hungarian.
  • P. J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This?" (1988), New York: Grove Press. p. 45

• [E]verywhere there was the curiously clanging, grumbling tone of Korean speech.
  • James Kirkup, as quoted in The New Koreans: The Story of a Nation (2017), by Michael Breen, p. 40

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Korean language on Wikipedia