Languages
Native
Korean
99%
Secondary languages
English
25%
Language Samples
안녕하세요, 어떻게 지내세요?
Annyeonghaseyo, eotteoke jinaeseyo?
Hello, how are you?
잘 지냅니다, 감사합니다.
Jal jinaemnida, gamsahamnida.
I am doing well, thank you.
일, 이, 삼, 사, 오, 육, 칠, 팔, 구, 십
Il, i, sam, sa, o, yuk, chil, pal, gu, sip
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
Korean is a language isolate — it has no confirmed relatives outside the Korean peninsula. Hangul (한글), the Korean alphabet, was invented in 1443 by King Sejong the Great specifically to promote literacy among Korean commoners, replacing the cumbersome use of Chinese characters. The script is considered a feat of linguistic engineering: it encodes the phonetic and articulatory features of each sound into the shape of the letters themselves. Korean grammar places verbs at the end of sentences and uses an extensive system of speech levels to mark social relationships.
Similar Languages
Japanese
35%
North Korean (standard)
95%
Media
Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul, with traditional Hangul signage visible on the ceremonial gates.
Photo: 서울관광 아카이브 · KOGL Type 1
Did You Know
01
Hangul was deliberately designed to be learnable in a single morning — each letter shape echoes the position of the mouth and tongue when producing the sound.
02
Korean has two separate numeral systems in everyday use: a native Korean system and a Sino-Korean system borrowed from Chinese, each used in different contexts.
03
The Korean honorific system is so complex that the same sentence can be expressed in six or more levels of formality depending on the social relationship between speaker and listener.