Source #8

The Korean Language

Korean: Hangugmal (South Korea), Choseonmal (North Korea)

During the video Paul talks about the history of the Korean language, where it came from and all.

Facts about Korea:

• one of the major languages spoken in Northeast Asia
• spoken as first language by around 80 million people
• ~50 million in South Korea
• ~25 million in North Korea
• ~ 2.5 million in China (Yeongeon and Changbai)
• minorities through out the world like Japan, Russia, etc.

HISTORY 

Roots about the Korean language are unclear, some say it is part of the Altaic language family along with Turkic, Mongolic, Tungunsic, and Japonic languages. Some think that the Atlaic family is not accepted anymore and think that the Korean language share roots with the Dravidian languages of Southern India and Sri lanka. Another theory is that it derives from the Austroneasian language family. There are no proof of those theories.

Korean is classified as a language isolate, sole member of the Koreanic language family

The proof are missing due to the lack of evidence of the older Korean writing. The oldest sample aren't even 1000 years old and are written in Chinese characters which make it difficult to decipher.

Old Korean (1st to 10th century CE)

This marked the beginning of the 3 Kingdoms Period: Goguryeo, Bekje, Silla. It is not known how close the languages of these kingdoms were related. They may be related to a dialect of Old Korean or distinct members of Koreanic language family.

China's influence on Korean language

Paul continues to talk about the history of the language more in depth. He then says that Korean has been tremendously influenced by China throughout its history due to invasions attempts, alliances, and extensive trade. Korean didn't have its own writing system it used Chinese characters plus a lot of Chinese vocabulary has been integrated into Korean.

Middle Korean (10th to 16th centuries)

Paul then moves on and talk about Middle Korean. It shares some similarities with Chinese since they both use 4 tones and Korean had the Chinese loan-words which retained their tones. The tones have disappeared in Modern Standard Korean. We knew that the Middle Korean had tones since there were some markings in the Hangul writing system. It was created in 1444 by King Sejong the Great of the Joseon Dynasty. The purpose of the creation of Hangul was to increase the literacy among the poor and the people who don't have an education. Korean went through a lot of different writing systems that used Chinese characters in various ways to represent Korean. (Idul and Gugyeol writing). At the beginning, the scholars and elites were against Hangul but it became widespread over the centuries.

Modern Korean era - 17th Century

For a long time, Korean was written/ published in a mixed script. Hanja (Chinese characters) was used for content words and Hangul for functional or grammatical words, and inflections. It was similar to how Japanese is still written today.

Korea was occupied by Japan from 1910 to 1945. So, Japanese was made the official language and policies were implemented that would have replaced Korean with Japanese is the occupation lasted. Japanese became the language of education except for Korean classes. Speaking Korean at school was banned, Koreans were pressured to changed their names with a Japanese name, Korean language newspapers were ordered to shut down. These assimilation policies were gradually introduced and speeded up in the later years of the occupation. The Korean language survived the occupation but there was a significant amount of Japanese vocabulary that was absorbed into the language. Decades after the occupation, the Hanja gradually became de-emphasized in favour of the Hangul. Nowadays most texts are written entirely or mostly in Hangul, with Hanja mainly used to prevent possible ambiguity between homophones. In North Korea, Hanja was eliminated from all official publications in 1949.

Paul speculates that the growing emphasis on the Hangul was partly a reaction to the Japanese occupation that a growing sense of Korean sovereignty made the Korean people want to use their nation's homegrown script.

Hangul day - October 9th, in SK

The existence of the Hangul script is celebrated every year on Hangul day, October 9th in South Korea. Choseongeul day in North Korea, January 15th. Both Koreas have a literacy rate of over 99%.

LANGUAGE

Hangul description

Hangul is a fantastic writing system that you can learn to read very quickly. It has a basic set of consonants and vowels symbols that are arranged together to form compact syllables. This system is ingenious because once you get used to the most common combinations of symbols then you can instantly recognize them. The consonants symbols are in the group of different letters. They are velar and the basic shape show the tongue's position in the mouth. This point indicates the place of articulation near the back of the mouth. Then, there are alveolar which the basic shape shows the tongue touching the roof of the mouth. There are bilabial consonants which shows the basic shape of the mouth with 2 lips. Dental, basic shape shows the place of articulation at the upper teeth, and the there is glottal which the basic shape shows the place of articulation is in your throat. (see image #1)

Vocabulary

The most current examples of written Korean are all or almost all of the words are written in Hangul including native Korean and Sino-Korean words. They are words of Chinese origins.

Sino-Korean words account for over 60% of Korean vocabulary.

• They are most prevalent in formal and academic vocabulary
• A large percentage of everyday vocabulary is Sino-Korean as well

When Korean is written in a mixed Hangul-Hanja script it is easier to recognize the Sino-Korean words and you can distinguish more easily words that sound the same since they are written with different Chinese characters.

Loanwords from other languages (mainly English):

• juice -> ju seu
• fork -> po-keu
• sandwich -> saen-deu-wi-chi

the pronunciation changed to become suited to Korean phonology. Some loanwords are abbreviated or used in ways that the original words were not used.

• selfie-> sel-ka (self + camera)
• window shopping -> a-i- syo-ping (eye + shopping)

Sentence structure

• Verb final language , SOV

Ex: I play baseball -> na-neun ya-gu-leul hae-yo (na - S), (ya-gu; O), (hae-yo; V) [it is possible to say this sentence without the subject if it is clear from the context]

Neun and leul are particles, they are placed after nouns/pronouns to indicate their function, or relationship to the other words in the sentence.

-Leul is a direct object marker showing that "ya-gu" (baseball) is the object of the verb.

-Neun is a topic marker, after words ending in a consonant (eun)

-Na is the subject and topic because it is the information that has been previously been mentioned or is clear from the context, it is the topic being elaborated on.

• Subject markers

they are used to introduce a new information or to introduce the importance of existing information so to emphasize it, ~i after a consonant and ~ga after a vowel.

-Modifiers come before the thing they modify

Adj come before nouns, longer modifiers also come before the noun you want to modify

*Korean doesn't have definite or indefinite articles

Verbs and Adjectives

Every sentence in Korea has to end in a verb or in adjective, verbs and adj act similar to each other in Korean, they are both conjugated for past and non-past as well as for different speech levels of politeness.

-Verbs: dictionary forms of all verbs end in (da)

ex: mal-da (to stop) ->verb stem (mal) ; ja-da (to sleep) -> verb stem (ja)

keu-neun meog-da mar-a- yo (he stops eating)-> Mar is the stem; a is the informal present tense; yo is the polite suffix

when the verb ends in "a" then only "yo" is added. If you don't add the "yo" it makes the sentence more casual since it's an informal non-polite.

If the Stem ends in (eul) it is replaced with (eo-yo), ex: ae-sseu-da (to try); geul-deul- eun ae-sseo-yo (They try)

If the last vowel of the stem is (eo), (u), (i) or a "combination vowel" then, (~eo), (~eo-yo) is added to the stem. ex: meog-da(to eat) -> Na-neun tteog- bokk -i- leul meog-eo-yo (I eat toppogi)

Past tense:

The past tense form is equal to the present form but only you need to add a suffix " sseo" ex: (Present tense) keu-neun ja "He sleeps" -> (Past tense) keu-neun jass-eo "He slept" [If need to do the polite form only add "yo"]

Future:

Korean doesn't have future tense only past and non-past, but there are ways to express the future like the "probable future". To do so you only need to add "eul keo-ye-yo" to the verb stem after the consonant or ~ l keo-ye-yo after a vowel.

I'm going to eat toppogi or I shall eat toppogi -> Na-neun tteog-bokk-i-leul meog-eul keo-ye-yo when you are referring to yourself it shows determination rather than speculation.

-Adjectives :

When an adjective is after the subject it acts similarly to a verb and is conjugated. ex: "The mountain is tall" -> san - i nop -a- yo. ; nop(adj stem), a (present tense affix), yo (polite affix) > Informal polite present tense

"The mountain was tall" -> san- i nop-a-ss-eo yo; ss-eo (indicates the past)

Speech levels

Korean has 7 politeness levels , not all 7 are commonly used it's only 3 or 4 of them, then the other 2 are Formal polite (mam-ni-da) and Formal non-polite (man-da).

Informal polite: used when speaking to friends, acquaintances, colleagues that have a similar status to you, shop staff Informal non-polite: used when speaking to very close friends, brother/sister, someone a few years younger than you, or someone you want to be rude to!

Formal polite : speaking to someone of a higher status than you, and people you are meeting for the first time. Informal polite: neutral form to use when you don't know who the reader or listener is. Also, it can be used when speaking to friends of same age.

ex: see Image #2

My thoughts after the video:

I really enjoy the video even though it was along one, it was interesting, the elements that Paul put in his video really fitted well together there was a nice flow. I like how he explained all the terms he was using, how he wrote under each character the sound, he highlighted and used colours for the sentences when he had to break them apart. He really gave us, the audience, of the evolution on how the Korean language began to be created and how it is used nowadays with the vocabulary, sentence structure, verbs and adjectives, and speech levels. I didn't know that Korean had that so many speech levels of politeness, I knew that it had politeness like Japanese but not so much. The only thing I would’ve liked to see are all the names of the 7 levels of speech he mentioned the ones that were mostly used but not the other that were not commonly used.

Source #9

The Japanese language

Nihongo -> Japanese

History

Facts about Japan:

• 126 million native speakers
• 9th most spoken language in the world (considering native speakers)
• spoken mainly in Japan (and limited extent in emigrant communities and former colonies like Korea, Taiwan, etc)
• Japan is from the Japonic language family
• Japonic includes the endangered Ryukyuan languages (Okinawa and Amami)
• Early history of Japanese and the other languages is largely unknown

Theory that Japanese and Korean languages share a common ancestor. It is said that they could be part of the Atlaic family which includes the Turkic, Mongolian, and the Tungusic languages. This theory is very debated and not accepted. Another theory is that the Japanese has been in contact with the Yayoi people, who migrated from the North-East Asian mainland to into Japan 2-3000 years ago. The theory says that the language or languages of the Jomon people who were already there got in contact with the other. Japanese was not a written language in its early history, during the Yayoi period. It leaves us little evidence what it was really like during that time.

3rd Century CE, Yamato state in Japan established relations with China. Next 600 years would be a period of heavy Chinese influence. The rulers and the elites thought to imitate many aspects of the Chinese culture. Written Chinese was probably introduced to Japan in the 4th Century. Since Japan had no written form, the Classical Chinese became the first literary language used by the elite. Later on, Chinese characters began being adopted to write Japanese. The earliest examples of Japanese writing are from the 8th century. There are 2 forms : Kanbun 漢文 and Man'yōgana 万葉仮名.

• Kanbun:

It was the writing of Japanese in Classical Chinese style, it used Chinese characters to represent the meaning of the Japanese words. Kanbun texts were essentially Chinese but it was intended to be readable in Japanese.

• Man'yōgana:

It was a way to write Japanese with Chinese characters with most of the characters representing the phonetic sound of the underlying Japanese syllables.

Ex: mountain (yama, 也麻 -> Chinese characters , used for phonetic value. It used those characters rather than 山 which means mountain in Chinese nowadays.

Many characters could be used for the same sound.

Writing Japanese characters phonetically using Chinese characters had no connection to the meaning must have been unnecessary work.

• 2 systems of simplified phonetic characters developed from the Man'yōgana system during the 8th and 9th century.
• The 2 systems created were : Hiragana and Katakana

The purpose of those 2 systems was to annotate Kanbun texts with it Japanese speakers could read the Classical Chinese texts. The Chinese characters represented the meaning while Kana provided the pronunciation and the grammatical elements and inflections. Something that Chinese doesn't have in its writing system. Some diacritic marks also indicated how to change the word order.

The method of annotating the Classical Chinese texts with Kana was the early version of Modern Japanese writing system. With the process of using Chinese characters to fit with spoken Japanese there were a lot of Chinese vocabulary that was adopted into Japanese. Sometimes Chinese characters were written to be pronounced with the Chinese pronunciation and it was called : On-yomi 山(san) 中 (chū). Another way of writing was the Chinese characters but used with a Japanese pronunciation and meaning: Kun-yomi 山(yama) 中 (naka). The Chinese words became an integral part of Japanese to 60% of the total vocabulary (particularly in the writing ).

Late Middle Japanese period (1185 to 1600)

The language developed and became closer to the Japanese we know nowadays, it changed more phonologically. Then, near the end of this period in the year 1543 the Europeans came to Japan. Through the contact with traders and missionaries some of the English vocabulary came in the Japanese language. Then it stopped with the "period of isolation" from 1603 to 1853. During that time the contact with foreigners became more strict, there were only a few places were one could have contact with them. For example, the Dutch trading post "Dejima" in Nagasaki. Among this meeting some Dutch loanwords came into Japanese for everyday use. For example:

-Garasu ガラス-> "glas"

-Ranpu ランプ-> "lamp"

-Kōhī コーヒー-> "koffie"

-Koppun コップ-> "kop"

These loanwords are Gairaigo 外来語 which is a non-Chinese loanwords that are normally from European languages and are written in Katakana. The isolation period took place in the Edo period with it the capital changed from Kansai to Edo which is Tokyo. The Edo dialect became more popular and became the standard variety of Japanese. Later, when the period of isolation ended in 1853, the number of interaction with the world increased. Through this event the Japanese language was affected when it entered to the Meiji period.

Meiji period

• The number of Gairaigo increased
• A lot of new compound words created with Chinese characters and pronounced with the Chinese reading (on-yomi). The purpose of their creation were to represent new Western concepts and as a specialized academic vocabulary in arts, sciences, maths, and technology.

Wasei Kango 和製漢語 (Japanaese-made Chinese words) is the creation of new words that were coined using Chinese characters. After WW2, Japan adopted a lot of Gairaigo mainly from English which are everyday concepts like : computer-> konpyūtā コンピューター, other used for academic purposes and technology.

Varieties of Japanese

Standard Japanese is based on the dialect of Tokyo but there are many unique, regional and local dialects.

• Kansai's region dialects which other associate it with comedy
• Dialects of Tohoku which many people don't understand very well
• Dialects of Okinawa which retain some elements of the area's old Ryukyuan languages
• almost everywhere you go in Japan there is a distinctive dialect

The dialects of today resembles more to the Standard Japanese than in the past. The people who use the traditional dialects are older people, working class people, and people in the countryside.

Characteristics 

Phonology

Japanese has 5 vowels : a あ, i い, u う, e え, o お Long: ā あー , ī いー, ū うー, ē えー , ō おー

The difference between the long and short vowels is the meaning of the word. The vowels are always fully articulated and not reduced or shorten. Some of the consonants are similar to the ones that English has which causes few problems to learners.

-Japanese syllables always ends with a vowel which makes pronunciation simple since there are a few consonant clusters. People don't usually pronounce multiple consonants side by side. There are some exceptions like :

-Gakkou 学校 （がっこう）-> school - gaku-kou since it's the same consonant they fuse themselves, the small [っ] indicates you need to hold the consonant for twice as long.

-Nasal sound (ん) used as its own syllable without a vowel : kanpai (cheers) -> 乾杯 (かんぱい)

Each Kana character represent moras which is a rhythmic unit not syllables ex:

Ka-n-pa-i か-ん-ぱ-い(4 moras) -> kan-pai (2 syllables) かん-ぱい

There are a few situations where a syllable doesn't end with a vowel.

• Pronunciation of Gairaigo (外来語)

cake-> (Kēki) ケキ

hard disk -> (hādodisuku) ハドヂスク

McDonalds -> (makudonarudo) マクドナルド

Using vowels at the end of syllables makes it easier to pronounce native Japanese words even though it might be weird to pronounce those gairaigo.

• Pitch Accent

It can be difficult to learn as a person new to this language.

-Japanese moras have either a low or a high pitch

-high pitch represent the accent of a word

-Pitch accent might indicate the difference in a meaning ex:

low-high : hashi 端 （はし）= end, edge

high-low : Hashi, 椅 （はし）= bridge

low-high: hashi 箸（はし）= chopsticks

Pitch accent is differs depending the dialect of the speaker, it won't create any problems for communication but it will make you look like you have an accent.

Word Order

Basic word order : SOV (subject, object, verb) Ex:

Paul ate takoyaki (SVO) = Pōru ga takoyaki o tabeta (S O V) [ga is a subject marker , o is an object marker]. Some elements of a phrase can be taken away if the subject is clear ex: takoyaki o tabeta it means I ate takoyaki

• Equational sentences

They are phrases that with no verb but still end in a verbal form (Noun+copula) or (Adjective + copula) see Image #1

Topic marker and subject marker

は (wa) - topic marker : it is used when you want to about something that is already part of the conversation and make it a topic. After, everything will be related to it.

が (ga) - subject marker: it is used when introduce something new to the conversation. It also has another important use which is to focus on something. Ga is a focus marker since it can be used to mark an object when the object is stressed. It is also used to mark the object of certain stative verb.

• Particles

Japanese has many particles. They are words that indicate the relationship of a word, or a phrase or clause, to the rest of the sentence. They always come after the word they are connected to. Some can show grammatical functions like :

wa は (topic) , ga が (subject) , o を(object)

others function like prepositions like :

kara から(from), ni に (to), no の (of)

Agglutination

Japanese is an agglutinative language more specifically in the verbs. Agglutinative languages have a high number of morphemes. Instead of expressing an additional idea by adding an extra word, you attach an additional affix to an existing word. See image #2

The important information to retain is that with a single verb you can make different verb form like past, present, future by only adding things to the original verb. Verbs can have suffixes after them.

Vocabulary and the writing system

Japanese vocabulary is made from :

• native Japanese vocabulary (wago)
• Chinese loanwords and words created from Chinese characters ( kango)
• loanwords from other languages (gairaigo)

Japanese sentence uses: Kanji (Chinese characters) which can be pronounced as an on-yomi or as an kun-yomi, and Hiragana. The use of Hiragana is mainly for writing the grammatical elements of a sentence, inflections and particles. See image #3

Some sentences in Japanese can be written in Katakana but it is usually used for Gairaigo (foreign loanwords) See Image #4

Hiragana and Katakana are quite similar since they both have an equivalent for each letter on each syllaberie. A way to differentiate those two writings are that Hiragana is more rounder and Katakana has a more angular characters. Both Hiragana and Katakana came from Kanji, some which developed from the same Kanji while others developed from a different kanji. Both Kana are easy to learn but it is harder to read an entire sentence in kana than kanji if you know it since kana is only phonetic rather than kanji that gives the meaning a little.

My thoughts after the video : 

Paul gave an overall good information about the Japanese language a little about the history and about the characteristics of that language. The only thing I didn't really like is that when he was explaining the phonology or word order he didn't explain the linguistic terms such as copula, coinage, compounding, morpheme, agglutinative, etc. I knew what he was talking about since I had a class, Introduction to Linguistic, the semester before this one. If someone is interested in the video about the Japanese language he might get overwhelmed by all of those terms and won't understand the content so much.

Outline

Hi guys I know I'm late in submitting the outline with everything going on with the Covid-19. My boss decided to boost my shift hours and I have been working 5 days a week up tp 7 to 10 hours a day, I'm stressed and exhausted. I work in a grocery shop and now they needed me with all the online and phone orders from customers who can't get out of their homes and the clients who come to the store. I tried my best doing and organizing myself but I gave up since I was too tired. Since March 30th, I asked my boss to reduce my hours at work so I can attend my online classes and be able to do my homework and study. I hope that everything will settle down soon and this nightmare stops.

So with my research so far I will be focusing more on the writing system of those three languages but also a little with the cultural aspect of it.

Outline review

So today I received my grade for my outline and the comments that went along with it. They are clear but some are more difficult to understand. I need to book a zoom session with my teacher to ask all the questions I have related to my outline. I couldn't go into my class on Thursday since I was working. I need to really understand and redo my outline correctly with the comments and all so that my final paper is good. I thought it was a good idea to talk about the similarities and differences between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages and also about the culture because it's interesting looking at those 3 cultures and compare them. It would also serve as a way to help people dissipate stereotypes. With the comments from my teacher she said I should only focus on the languages rather than going to a whole new topic about culture so now I just have to figure out which topic I will choose for my third paragraph in my outline.

After my class on Thursday I had a private conversation with my teacher about my outline. I had some questions about her comment on my work and I wanted her help to clear all my questions. She really help me make my outline better and well structured. It gave me more energy and motivation to do my research and do my paper.