Korean
| III | This is a Category III Language. |
Welcome to the Korean Wikibook, a free textbook for learning Korean.
Note: To use this book, your web browser must first be configured to display Korean (Hangeul) characters. Check the two boxes below:
| ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂㅅㅇㅈㅎ | 안녕하세요 |
The boxes show Hangeul characters and jamo. If symbols appear as blank boxes, garbage, or question marks (?), your computer or web browser needs to be configured for the Korean language.
Introduction
[edit | edit source]Korean is the official language of both the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea). It is also one of the two official languages in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, China. Worldwide, there are about 80 million Korean speakers, most of whom live in China, Japan or the United States outside of the Koreas, but they also represent sizeable minorities in Russia (esp. Far East and Sakhalin), New Zealand, Kazakhstan, Canada, Uzbekistan and Australia.
In the Republic of Korea, the language is most often called 한국말 (Han-guk-mal), or more formally, 한국어 (Han-guk-eo) or 국어 (Guk-eo; literally "national language"). In North Korea and Yanbian, the language is most often called 조선말 (Chosŏnmal), or more formally, 조선어 (Chosŏnŏ).
Experts are unsure of the origins of the Korean language, although some believe it to come from the Altaic language tree. It is an agglutinative language, so it has some certain special characteristics that are unlike English. A student of Chinese languages will quickly notice that Korean shares much of their vocabulary, while a Japanese student will also notice similarities in grammar and vocabulary.
Feel free to use English Wiktionary's Korean language Category as a reference for these courses. New students to this type of language may initially progress slowly, but as study progresses, previously unfamiliar aspects of Korean will begin to make sense and new concepts will be more easily learned. Korean grammar is complex but surprisingly also very simple, and always very fun to learn.
Reading and writing
[edit | edit source]- Alphabet Introduction
- Learn to read, write and pronounce Korean (course)
- Principles of Orthography
- Essential Pronunciation Rules
- Advanced Pronunciation Rules
- Mini-tutorial Lesson
- Getting started on Hanja
Grammar
[edit | edit source]Vocabulary
[edit | edit source]- Expert Hanja Hanja Terms for Expert Level Learners
- Expert Terms for Expert Level Learners
Conversation
[edit | edit source]External Links
[edit | edit source]- Learn Korean in 15 minutes comic
- Basic Online Korean course
- Learning Korean in Korean (Wikibooks)
- Free Korean Language Podcast
- Korean Language Institute
- Learn Korean with Free Lessons
- Overview of courses on the internet
- FSI-Korean online
- Korean phrases online
- Sogang University Online Korean Course
- Korean Course (free)
- Cours de Coreen
- Course and korean dictionnary