Did you know? – Korean has no known linguistic relatives

Modern Korean is unique in its status as a “Language Isolate”, meaning it has no obvious relationship to nor does it descend from any other language.

Today, Korean is spoken by around 82 million people in North and South Korea, and also by diaspora communities in China, Japan, Russia, and the US.

Since the division of Korea after the Korean War, the dialects of North and South have become politicised, with South Korea employing political propaganda against the North’s standardised language. One area where the dialects can differ is in loan words, with South Korean dialects borrowing from English, whereas North Korean borrows more from Russian.

For Korean translations by qualified mother-tongue linguists, contact MTT today!

[email protected]

+44 (0) 844 856 1086