Talk:Korean language/Archive 1

message: It says: "Words that are written the same way may be pronounced differently, such as the examples below."
Yet for 읽고 they both have ilkko (ilko)/ 일꼬 for north and south  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.123.64.241 (talk) 06:25, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Pronunciation Table Error 

message: Question about the difference between North and South Korean Language.
1) North Korea: They only use 100 percent Korean. ( No Chinese character all Chinese or western derived vocabulary is replaced with Korean words).
2) North Korea, Regional accent ( Pyongyang, Hamkyungpukdo accent are two North Korean regional
accent).
3) North Korean writing is same as South Korea but surname writing is different. (이Lee (South)
but in 리 Lee ( North).
1) South Korea: 60 percent Korean and 40 percent ( Chinese and Western vocabulary usage)
2) South Korea, Regional accent ( Kyungsangdo, Chollanamdo accent are two South Korean regional accent).
3) South Korean, writing is same as North Korea but only difference South. They use 60 percent Korean plus 40 percent ( Chinese and western word vocabulary)
Fact: North and South Korea use Hangul writing. Speak: Korean as native official language.
North and South Korea, both Koreans do not depend on Chinese character for daily life.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one (talk • contribs) 07:10, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello, I was the editor adding the information. I got the information from a book that was written by a specialist Korean linguistics research group, so while of course one still can't be 100% certain, I think it is probably correct. Additionally, I've also heard a North Korean song that uses "문화주택":
 집없는 형제들엔 문화주택 세워주고...
-- KittySaturn 22:58, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Question about the difference between North and South Korean

message: Fact is Grammar structure between Korean and Japanese are similiar. Even Chinese lone words between Korean and Japanese sound similiar. Chinese lone words pronunciation does not sound like Chinese. Korean and Japanese share many words that sounds similiar with similiar meanings.
I really don't think past wars and military occupation by Japanese military government can change Korean and Japanese language similiarity. Its not overemphasis of similarities between Korean and Japanse. Its a fact.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one (talk • contribs) 07:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Overemphasis of similarities with Japanese

message: Anon user 65.112.248.130 changed the number of Korean speakers from 78 million to 180 million without citing a source for the change. The 78 million number comes from the Ethnologue report linked at the bottom of the page . It's entirely possible the Ethnologue numbers are wrong (it cites a date of 1999 for that number, 5 years ago), but this new number 180 million seems like too big of a jump. South Korea gives 48 million for the population and North Korea gives 22 million for the population, leaving about 8 million Korean speakers outside of Korea, for a total of 78 million, which seems reasonable. 180 million, OTOH, seems to have emerged from nowhere. I'm reverting for now. Nohat 22:27, 2004 Apr 6 (UTC)
:LOL. Maybe it was a typo for 80 million... That's the estimate found in , which includes a breakdown by country as well. I'm not sure how much to trust the numbers for Korean speakers of the former Soviet Union though. Most of them have lost Korean but still identify themselves as Korean speakers. The Korean they do speak is very different from the Korean spoken in North and South Korea, being influenced by Russian and other languages. One of these days I'll get around to writing an article about the Korean language spoken by these people...  --Iceager 21:28, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Anon vandalism

message: Doesn't linguists count Gangwon-mal as a dialect? It seems somewhat different from others in vocabulary, etc. --PuzzletChung @DATE@
:You are right.  How could people in Yeongdong speak with the same dialect as people in Seoul?  I will fix this.  --Sewing 17:10, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Dialects

message: Current text: Derived from ollida is the noun ollim, which is the humble form of seonmul ("gift").
:I have never heard the noun ollim being used with this meaning (I am a native Korean speaker). The Korean dictionaries I've consulted do not give this definition either. I am inclined to think this is a mistaken statement, and will delete it unless people object. --Iceager 07:22, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Deleted. --Iceager 09:30, 16 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: But what about "올림이야," as said by a nephew to me?  Don't 올리다 and 드리다 have similar meanings?  --Sewing 17:10, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Ollim

message: My ears pick up some sort of phonetic change that happens in the word /ilgop/ meaning "seven". The /i/ sounds somehow different, perhaps rounded or close central? Is there a rule to explain this change?--Sonjaaa 19:00, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)
:Phonetic changes before or after other sounds are universal. For example, the /I/ sound in German <ich>, <in>, <Fisch>, <Schiff> might differ between these four words. While I don't know about <ilgop> in particular, I don't think we should mention it if it's merely one of those phonetic universals. – Wikipeditor 21:41, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: seven

message: I think we need to beef up vowel harmony in the Korean language. Toktok sounds cute but tuktuk sounds crude. Saljjak sounds diminuitive but seuljjuk sounds mischievious.
* o, a sound cute
* u, eo sound crude
* eu is neutral, more or less
Traditionally, o and a tend to appear together, and u and eo form a pair too. This is particularly evident in onomatopoeia.
i and ae sound diminuitive because they're front vowels, but I don't know if it's just me. I'm not too sure about e, ye, or yae either. Kjoonlee 09:29, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)
Vowel harmony in Korean:
(From Unilang)
"The Korean language has three kinds of vowels - Positive (ㅏ, ㅗ), Neutral (ㅣ, ㅡ), and Negative (ㅓ, ㅜ).... In modern Korean, vowel harmony rule is no longer generally obeyed, and it appears in only certain kinds of words; words with negative vowels stress the meaning.
Bezant 09:36, 2005 Feb 24 (ETS)
I agree with Kjoonlee that more needs to done on Korean vowel harmony. I have now noticed that someone has removed the vowel harmony section altogether. What a pity! Yes, there is something on this under vowel harmony, but on this page (Korean language) any reference or link has ceased to exist. 
Ebrownless 22:29, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Vowel harmony

message: I see only question marks where I think Hangul characters should be, using firefox, and squares when I use IE.  Can someone explain how to correct this, preferably in firefox?
::At least some of the squares may represent IPA characters. The answer to this is that the article needs to be upgraded to use the IPA template around the IPA transcriptions. For instance, without the template: tʰɛˈjaŋ - with the template . I may get round to doing this, unless someone else would like to. :) rossb 13:09, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Help with language display

message: The Total Korean language population should be updated.
Total Korean speaking population is 85-87 million.
73 or 75 million mark is outdated that was (Year 1999).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one (talk • contribs) 07:20, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Korean language

message: Unless someone has substantive objections, I propose collapsing sections 2 and 10 into one -- section 10 Writing System has more info, but section 2 Script pretty much just seems to overlap the info in 10.  --- Eiríkr Útlendi 03:10, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Given the absence of any dissenting opinions, I have collapsed the two, moving the content from Script into Writing System and adjusting to fit.  --- Eiríkr Útlendi 06:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Korean script vs writing system

message: I've noticed that you're using the IPA character for ejective consonants for the so-called "tensed" plosives. I read the Korean phonology written by Hyun Bok Lee in the IPA Handbook, and he's describing these quite differently. Instead of "tensed", which is not really any standard phonetic terminology, these phonemes are described as voiceless unaspirated lenis plosives and instead of the ejective characters  are used. The same description is used for the two "s"-phonemes, and the characters used are /s, z/. The allophones of these sounds changes depending on phonotactic context, but syllable-inititally, they following character are used  (they don't work in all browser configurations).
The non-standard terminology used in this article is explained in the following way:
:"The symbol  is used to denote the tensed consonants (, , , , and ) but its official IPA usage is for ejective consonants, which the tensed stops in Korean are not. The tensed stops are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure. However, it may be argued that such a manner of articulation can still be categorized as glottalization, justifying the use of ."
This seems very confusing to me. To describe these lenis plosives and fricatives as something similar to ejective plosives seems awfully tentative. I have listened to plenty fo samples of ejective as well as lenis plosives as spoken by native speakers, and even as a layman they sound very different from one another. I would recommend using the IPA characters as they were intended by the IPA rather than borrowing them to use in this very non-standard fashion. Add to this the fact that the allophones of the "tensed plosives" often are just as your average English [z], [g] or [d] and you get one very confusing terminology.
Peter Isotalo 19:25, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
:I'm not sure they're "lenis" either (which by the way is another term "which is not really any standard phonetic terminology", since "tensed" is just layman talk for "fortis", which is itself ill defined), but I'm making the change. The ejective symbol is just utterly wrong. Better to use Ladefoged's asterisk: [p*, t*, k*, s*]. At least using a voiceless symbol on a voiced letter (or, perhaps, a voice symbol on a voiceless letter?) will make people scratch their head and read the description. There's been a lot of argument about what's really going on with these sounds (no one can even agree on whether they're lenis or fortis, though they seem fortis to me), so don't expect this to end the debate! kwami 08:47, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
::Just looked at the IPA Handbook, and we got their account backwards: it is the "lenis" alveolar (Hangul d) that is transcribed  and , while the "fortis" ("tense") alveolar (Hangul tt) is transcribed . I was puzzled why they would use the under-ring for "tense", since that would be equivalent to slack voice. They don't: they use it to mean tenuis. Therefore the expected IPA usage of the under-wedge (for stiff voice) is not out of sync with the Handbook. Of course, it's another question whether the 'tense' obstruents are actually 'stiff voice'. kwami 11:41, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)
All I've heard is that there's an ongoing discussion about whether doen sori consonants are lenis or fortis among linguists/phoneticians, so why present either of them as fact? – Wikipeditor 19:15, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lenis/fortis consonants 

message: Korean language have consonant allophones, one of which is recorded on the article but others not:
* ㄴ - Other than [n], there is [ɲ].
* ㄹ - Other than [l], there are [ɾ], [ɭ], and [ʎ].
* ㅎ - Other than [h], there are [ɦ], [ç]
And pronunciations ㅈ and ㅊ are generally perceived as [ʦ], not [c], and [ʣ] is an allophone.
--Puzzlet Chung 06:04, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Concering IPA 

message: I'm not a linguist, but what an impressive article.  If some references (and possibly an image or two) we added, it would surely stand a good chance of becoming a featured article. -- ALoan (Talk) 09:21, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[WP:FAC]]

message: Bezant twice deleted my comment
:More recent is the idea that the language of Goguryeo was unrelated to Silla Korean, but was instead ancestral to Japanese,
most recently with the comment
:(Note: no evidence and there are a lot of cognates between the languages of Shilla and Goguryeo)
However, in some analyses, the Silla-Goguryeo cognates are thought to be borrowings. That is referenced in Beckwith, who is the principal proponent of the Goguryeo-Japanese connection. An abstract of his talk at the upcoming 13th Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference is available here.  
Bezant has also removed my comments on why 19th-century links to Dravidian are doubtful, so I'll replay them here: the typological similarities are shared to various degrees by half the world's languages (they're correlated with verb-final word order), and so are not significant. He also mentions some look-alike words, such as '"Nal" means "day" in both Tamil and Korean', but these are much too similar to be anything but coincidence at these time depths (like English two and Korean tul, or English much and Spanish mucho). There's a reason why this wasn't taken seriously in the 20th century. Both these ideas deserve mention, but with reservations. kwami 05:58, 2005 July 15 (UTC)
It is up to the readers to decide if the connexion between Dravidian and Korean is "doubtful." Also, it is traditionally accepted that there is some relationship between Goguryeo and Shilla; to say that there is absolutely no evidence is bit loft, considering the similarities in their cultures. For instance, native geographical names known from Shilla and Goguryeo have a common trait; that is, the heavy use of metal names. One must also take in account cultures into their linguistic analysis. You should also read the discussion above between the similiarities between Korean and Japanese. Bezant
:Then change my wording to be less biased, but don't remove the point entirely. In order for readers to decide if the connection has merit, they need to know why some consider it to be doubtful. Merely listing a bunch of competing claims just results in confusion. Many or most readers will not have the background in typology for such things to be obvious. For each of the proposed connections, we should have the arguments for, and the arguments against. If you wish to give the arguments against the Dravidian hypothesis, great (perhaps you'll do better than me); otherwise I'll put it back in, trying to be less sure of myself this time. kwami 21:48, 2005 July 15 (UTC)
Agreed. Bezant
I think the current description of the relationship between Dravidian and Korean as "speculatory" is being WAY too polite. The relationship is extremely doubtful and not taken seriously by anyone except crack pots.  The idea that somehow the Dravidian ethnic group could possibly exert any influence on the Korean language and the Korean people who are buffered by vast physical and cultural barriers is completely improbable.  Kwami, please put some of your claims back on the page. Sour pickle 21:54, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, you could probably find claims that it's Algonkian if you ignored the 20th century. I just deleted the Dravidian claim altogether. It's not worth saving. Bezant is probably the only person alive who supports it. kwami 00:43, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You should put it back.  I found it interesting.  Didn't you ever hear Heo Hwang-ok--Dangerous-Boy 09:15, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Goguryeo, Silla, and Tamil 

message: This article is the August 2005 Collaboration of the Month for Korea-related topics.  Let's make it FA-worthy! -- Visviva 11:39, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Collaboration of the Month 

message: How were the languages of the Three Kingdoms of Korea related to each other, and what is their supposed relationship to modern Korean and Japanese. Wikipedia doesn't seem to be particularly clear on this subject.
:Short answer: What I've heard is that Goguryeo's language was 부여, Silla (and probably Gaya) had 한 languages, and, quoting myself from the Baekje article, "[t]wo languages were spoken in Baekje. It seems that a group of Fuyu/Buyeo language speakers whose ancestors had left Goguryeo to establish the early Baekje states (see here) ruled over a population of indigenous Han language speakers." Fuyu being the language group of migration waves from the north, and Han being the group of the peninsular South or even of migration from further South, they were not mutually intelligible and unrelated to each other. Over the centuries, they merged into what is now Korean only after the 4 states period. You still have different 지명 styles in the north and south on accounta Fuyu and Han. Unfortunately we have little to no samples of the northern language(s), and I think Jared Diamond actually maintains that Goguryeo and Japanese languages are closely related to each other (haven't read his book, though). Hope this helps~ Wikipeditor 19:27, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please forget what I said about the (suggested, disputed, etablished – choose one) Han language(s) possibly originating from further south. Upon asking about it, I learned that the Han  are indeed related to the (suggested, disputed, etablished – choose one) Fuyu languages. Han language seems to have arrived with a migration wave (also from the north) that entered the peninsular south before Fuyu language migration arrived. Wikipeditor 21:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Languages of the Three Kingdoms, and relations 

message: Would it sound odd to translate 국어/gugeo as "domestic language" rather than "national language" when a Korean in Korea is referring to the Korean language in Korea? – Wikipeditor 19:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It would to me.  I tend to think of 국어 as similar to 우리말 -- thus most idiomatically rendered as something like "our language" or "our country's language."  "Domestic language" is perfectly correct, I think, but it does sound odd.  -- Visviva 13:10, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gugeo 

message: could someone explain why korean has two sets of numbers? (hana, dul, set... vs. il, i, sam...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_various_languages#Language_isolates
is it like japanese, where one is a "native" pronunciation and the other is derived from chinese?  which ones are used in which contexts?
:yes, try Korean numerals Appleby 05:04, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  numbers 

message: User Kwamikagami has questioned that "h" is bilabial before "o" or "u" (this edit ), commenting that it needs verification. Below is the sentence in the article concerned:
: becomes a bilabial  before  or , a palatal  before  or , a velar  before , a voiced  between voiced sounds, and a  elsewhere.
It is my impression that something like 호 or 후 is not pronounced with the bilabial [ɸ] (i.e. narrowing your lips to make a sound similar to English "f" and the same as the initial consonant of Japanese ふ), while the rest of the sentence is correct. Any comments? -- KittySaturn 16:44, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's also my perception.  Even when it comes to hangulized Japanese... for example, I have never heard a Korean pronounce 후쿠오카 as anything but "Hukuoka."  However, there may be some bilabialization going on below my threshold of awareness.  I don't have any authoritative references at hand. -- Visviva 18:51, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I second Visviva. On another note, I have always been under the impression that e.g. the first sound in  and  is ʍ (as opposed to ɸ) at least with younger speakers of the Seoul dialect, but I guess that's as disputed as whether to transcribe the sound of  as ʌ, ɤ, ɑ, ɔ or ə (Koreans seem to use ə a lot although IMHO it doesn't resemble the German ə at all. Do you think this is from 's use to replace the similar-looking ɚ in English words?), not to mention that of .—Wikipeditor 23:09, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bilabial h? 

message: Hangul is basically phonemic, but it's also morphophonemic a lot of the time. Meanwhile, Revised Romanization (RR) is phonemic too, but it's close to phonetic at times. I think I originally wrote 모락모락 as morakmorak, hilighting the underlying morphology; it was later changed to morangmorak, according to the basic rules of RR.
Well, if I remember correctly, RR does have provisions for phonemic or morphophonemic descriptions, and scholars actually take advantage of it; articles in journals of linguistics sometimes use RR to describe Korean, writing "hagessda" (instead of "hagetda") for "하겠다."
Likewise, one can argue that RR allows writing 모락모락 as morakmorak instead of morangmorak, since we're dealing with linguistics here at Wikipedia. --KJ 07:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the correct RR morphophonemic transcription would be "molagmolag". As you can see, this results in a romanisation that veers quite far from the actual pronunciation, and it could cause some confusion. So we should be careful about introducing this method. --Iceager 11:15, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Let's not make up our own romanization rules (at least not without telling the reader about it). I suggest that in cases where you feel that the Ministry of Culture's normal revised romanisation (morangmorak) or transliteration (molagmolag) rules of 2000 would not yield good results, try Yale instead, and perhaps leave a note close to the romanisation saying that you did so, like “ (Yale: molak.molak)” —Wikipeditor 14:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Morangmorak vs. Morakmorak: Phonetics vs. Morphology in RR 

message: any experts here want to share your comments at Talk:Hanja, about difference between hanja, hanmun, hanja-eo, sino-korean, etc, & possible reorganization of content? thanks. Appleby 17:33, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  need comments on hanja/hanmun 

message: In Korean language spoken population in USA.
Recent updated information more Korean Americans who were born or not born in USA spoke
more Korean language than Japanese americans speaking or understood Japanese.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Korea4one (talk • contribs) 07:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Koreans are a significant minority in Japan, AFAIK. I'm not sure about the US, although I know there are a lot of Koreans in Los Angeles and Hawaii. --KJ 07:45, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

text: How long must a significant number of speakers stay somewhere for the language to be called “indigenous”? Wikipeditor 12:57, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spoken in... 

message: I agree, the article is too long for one article. I see Janvier has moved the honorifics details to a separate article, which is a great idea. Can someone do the same for North-South differences and Phonology sections? This article should be a general overview, easily readable and interesting to people first coming to the subject. It's an amazingly detailed article, though, just a little difficult to read in one sitting. Not really 04:41, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Article too long

message: This is a superbly-written and very informative article. I wanted a basic overview of the Korean language, and that's exactly what I got here, with all the information presented clearly and cleanly.  Someone should nominate this article for Featured Article status. Bravo!  Moncrief 15:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I suggest you guys nominate this article for the Featured Article. Good job good effort Good friend100 15:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: GREAT article

message: Let me echo the praise for the many dedicated contributors who have made this such an excellent article.  Although this is already (and has long been) a wonderful article, I think there are some tasks still facing us before Korean language can make it through Peer Review and FAC successfully.  Specifically, we need to:
*Thoroughly reference the article.  The lack of references is probably the biggest weakness now.
*Expand the lead per the Featured Article criteria.  
*Generally build up the text in sections such as Consonants, so that there is enough to balance the tables and charts.
Korean linguistics isn't really an area of strength for me, but I may be able to help out with the references somewhat.  -- Visviva 07:26, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The road to FAdom

message: Many linguists classify Korean as an Altaic language, and it is mentioned as a possibility in the article, but it is widely acepted that Japanese is part of the eastern Altaic group. So if Korean is indeed an Altaic language, this would make it related to Japanese.Schprunkel 11:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I certainly don't think it's widely accepted that Japanese is Altaic. See Japanese language classification for a discussion of the several different theories; as is, it's also got an article at Japonic languages, and to classify it as its own family implies we won't ever know the source. Dekimasu 09:51, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a good amount of genetic evidence for considering the Japanese to be a very isolated people group, and therefore, a theory that posits an independent Japonic language family to account for just Japanese and Ryukyuan is not too farfetched. However, much of the genetic evidence also points to some distant genetic connections between both the Japanese and the Koreans and the Japanese and Altaic-speaking peoples, and there is an especially strong connection between the Japanese and the Ainu. It could also be pointed out that some genetic analyses would consider nearly all modern East and Southeast Asian nations (Chinese, Vietnamese, etc.) to be merely prehistoric (e.g., 10,000 or more years ago) offshoots of proto-Koreans. A discovery of some ancient documents that clarify the nature of the languages of ancient Koguryeo, Paekche, and perhaps other languages spoken in ancient times on the fringes of what we now call "China" would probably be extremely enlightening. Ebizur 21:37, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Altaic Language 

message: At the end of the first paragraph in the Dialects section: "...to Western ears, often sounds European." I'm sorry, but exactly what does that mean? How does a "European" language sound? And to whom? A Westerner? Someone from Italy? Or Finland? If it sounds French to someone whose native language is English, then write that. But to think that all languages in Europe sound the same, or that all Westerners speak English, is just very, very narrow-minded and uneducated.
I think that was one of the silliest statement I've ever read on Wikipedia.
Kdehl 04:06, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's now been removed. Thanks for pointing that out, but you could have done it yourself, too.. ;) --Kjoonlee 05:16, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sounds European 

message: The vowel charts should be improved:  The colon symbol could be explained as lengthening (even if that term itself is unclear, it is some-thing that one can look up and try to understand), and, more importantly, there is no easy to find relating of the IPA symbols with the Hangul letters.  We need to make it easy for the user to see how each letter is pronounced (to the extent that this is feasible).  How about putting the Hangul characters next to the relevant IPA ones? Kdammers 04:27, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Vowel chart

message: That is inferred in the article.  I've never heard this before.  Isn't Vietnamese highly tonal and Korean is mono tonal?  Can someone look into this? WangKon936 22:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Similarity with Vietnamese???? 

message: Please vote at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Korean_family_names_%282nd_nomination%29  Badagnani 05:37, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[List of Korean surnames]] up for deletion 

message: This article says that Korean is  (or viewed as) language isolate. Since Korean has the same grammar as Japan (or vise versa), it should fall into the same category that Japan has. Although the writing system (hang(e)ul) is totally different, the speaking is similar and the grammar is the same as Japanese. Therefore, I am not an expert at language classification, but I wish that another person can make a change to the Classification part of the Korean Language article. Merci beaucoup. Orthodoxy
:Syntax is similar at the cursory level, but speech is not similar at all. (Writing is secondary to speech and is irrelevant when it comes to language classification.) --Kjoonlee 07:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classification. 

message: Can someone please translate this phrase- "Be yourself"- into casual, neutral Korean? (Consider that the "be" is imperative, yet not aggresive) Kikiluvscheese 03:59, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's kinda a tough question. Koreans don't use it that often. This should be it.
네 자신이 되어라. (Pronunciation: ne jashin'ee doe uh ra.)
Benhpark 23:59, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation 

message: I'm sorry if this is totally random, but isn't it a little odd that kekekeke redirects to Laughter, while kekekekeke redirects here?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.15.53.225 (talk) 19:01, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Odd 

message: I have read now all published under title Korean Language but I have not found any mentions to the old belief that Korean language is closer to Finnish language than any of Indo European languages. Nor any mention to Professor Gustav John Ramstedt 1873-1950 who, when being the first Finland´s Ambassador in Japan 1919-1930, created also a modern Korean Grammar. Professor Kalevi Wiik has said, before any DNA researchs, that Korean language is one language derived of the Proto Finno Ugrian languages developed in Central Asia Altai Region. This was also, before Wiik, the opinion of Professor Ramstedt. He saw also Korean connections to Kalmuk (Oirot) language which he placed of origin to Altaic language group. Thus, when compared these to the ancient belief that Koreans originated from nowadays East Turkistan (Sinkiang) and Western Mongolia, being part of, now politiced, Eastern Turanian Peoples and started wandering eastward c. 4000-3000 BC because the climate had bocome drier, through Manchurian Plain and ended to Korea sometime c. 2800-2600 BC. These ancient peoples were assimilated to the peoples living by then in the Korean Peninsula, then still culturally in Early Stone Age. In Finnish language the old transliteration of old name of Korea was Aamunkojon maa (Land of the First Morning Sight of Light). Another theory said that the newcomers described land with name Koria / Korea (Beautifully Handsome). Third wersion said that they named it Koiran maa (Dog´s Land) because the stone aged people living there had so many dogs and they ate mainly dog´s meat. The newcomers introduced the typical Finno Ugrian Slash and Burn method into the agriculture in Korea. It was presumably by this period when their languages were mixed with each others developed in next couple of hundred years to Proto Korean language when the peoples were assimilated with each others.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.112.173.17 (talk) 08:05, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unconvincing. The name Korea comes from Goryeo, from the 10th century of so. Goryeo came from Goguryeo. Som e people think Goguryeo was actually pronounced Gauri in speech. --Kjoonlee 08:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Koreans called themselves "Joseon" not Korea at the time the West named them... There are some language roots that can be argued to be the same though, for example the Korean number system and Hungarian sound very, very much the same. This isn't the Chinese numbers, but the hana, tul set, net, etc. Korean has many outside influences as well. Such as the Vietamese relation is due to the allowing Vietnamese to come into the country as a refuge. The Chinese is from cultural exchanges with influences mainly from Cantonese and another trade language I can't remember. However from what I learned about Creole languages, etc what determines the actual roots is the actual grammar structure of the language. In this Japanese and Korean do seem to be related since they both have the same basic grammar structure and trappings (Agglutinating). As supposed to Chinese which is an Isolating grammar structure.--Hitsuji Kinno 18:16, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Similar grammatical structures can be due to areal spreading.  The way relatedness is determined is by shared roots in words that haven't been (or, when it's uncertain, those that are less likely to be) borrowed.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:37, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Korean Language and Proto Finno Ugrian Language 

message: Hangukmal is spoken Korean... shouldn't something be mentioned about this difference? One doesn't say in Korean, I don't speak very goo hangukoh, you use mal.--Hitsuji Kinno 18:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: hangukmal

message: Hi, I want to post a recording of the Korean language, namely, a reading of The North Wind and the Sun in Korean. I want to use a translation from a book, which will be a little over 3 lines on a 1024x768 screen, using the default Wikipedia skin.
Would that be OK under fair use? If I want to use a self-made recording of it, would that have to be under fair use as well? Or can I use something more permissive? Thank you in advance. --Kjoonlee 21:47, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, this would probably be fine, depending on the copyright status of the translation.  The story is old enough to be in the public domain, but you need to make sure that the translation to Korean is also.  For something to be public domain in the United States, it must have been published before 1923.  Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example of text / sounds 

message: I saw some heavy vandalism, I'm going to revert it, here is an example of what I meant. 190.49.174.110 21:15, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protect the page 

message: Anyone have good sources about the difficulty of learning Korean for speakers of various other languages? 34tq34t (talk · contribs)/ has been inserting a quote from About.com about it being even harder than Japanese; I personally don't think About.com is a good source, so I've removed it. The only thing I've been able to find that's better is:
:
In that article, a Defense Language Institute official expresses her opinion that Korean is harder than Arabic, Japanese, or Chinese, and states that the failure rate for the Korean language course there is 25%. I'd rather have a more solid source than that, something like this  study of attrition rates for Russian. (Actually, 25% doesn't sound too high to me; the attrition rate for Arabic is 30%, according to , or 28%, according to ). cab (talk) 07:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statistics: How hard is Korean? 

message: Korean has more vowel sounds than those listed on the chart.
A good example are the many homographs in Korean:
눈 IPA /nun/ means "eye" but IPA /nu:n/ means "snow"
밤 IPA /pam/ means "chestnut" but IPA /pa:m/ means "night"
말 IPA /mal/ means "horse" but IPA /ma:l/ means "speech"
I feel like we should address this on the chart, or if not somewhere else Bigblair (talk) 13:14, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: But we do have those vowels in the vowel charts, and at Korean phonology. --Kjoonlee 00:11, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:   Additional vowel sounds