ABSTRACT
Korean has been variously connected with Dravidian, Austronesian, Palaeo-Asiatic, Chinese and, most convincingly, with the Altaic languages, with which it certainly shares many grammatical features. How many of these resemblances are areal or typological, however, is a moot point, and the exact genetic affinity of Korean remains questionable. The Chinese element is very large but essentially alien. Comparison with Japanese yields a surprising wealth of morphological and syntactical similarities, but the two languages seem to have developed in parallel, rather than to be derived from a common genetic source. Modern Korean derives from the ancient Korean Han dialect, which ousted its rival congeners thanks to the rise to political dominance of the Silla state, where it was spoken. It is spoken today by at least 70 million people in North and South Korea, and in Korean colonies in China, Japan and elsewhere. The literary norm is based on the Seoul dialect. There are minor differences of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary between the North Korean and South Korean variants of the language.
