KOREAN LANGUAGE. Korean belongs to the agglutinative class of languages, and is inter mediate between the Mongol-Tatar languages and the Japanese. It is entirely distinct, in both genius and structure, from Chinese, which has for many centuries been the literary language of the country, and that used for governmental documents, correspondence. etc. Chinese has never been a spoken language in Korea, but in numerable words have been borrowed from it and incorporated into the native vocabulary. The sounds, however, differ widely from the sounds of modern Chinese.
In the native Korean there is no proper de clension, case being indicated by certain sepa able particles (which taken by themselves have no meaning) affixed to the stem or root, the particles used for each particular case differing according as the last letter of the root is a con sonant. a vowel, or the letter 1, etc. The root itself is invariable. There is no proper plural, and genuine pronouns are nearly unknown. There is no grammatical gender. and there is no grammatical forum by which living beings can he distinguished from things. The verb, how ever, cannot be surpassed in the variety and deftness of its expressive power. One-fifth of the words of time vocabulary are either verbs or words capable of taking a verbal form. There is no distinction between verb, adjective, and adverb. and even the preposition, which on syntactical grounds becomes a postposition, is a part of a verb. The grammatical variations are very nu merous, and are said to average 300. Sonic forms I erform the functions of punctuation, and some are used to express emphasis; some are continua tives, expressing unfinished avtion. There are participial, gerundive, awl interrogative forms, find forms expressing condition. hypothesis, etc. The verb has no number, and for time three per sons there are three forms of civility (which ramify the verb in all its moods)—a common form used in speaking to inferiors, or of abstrac tions, or the like: a middle form used in speak ing of or to equals; and a higher form used in addressing or in speaking of superiors.
Syntax depends largely on position, as in the Chinese written language. The word which gov erns is invariably placed after the word widely is governed; the 'prepositions' indicating case become postpositions; the adjective precedes the noun it qualifies, and the adverb precedes the ad jective or verb; the dependent clause precedes the independent, and the noun precedes the verb which governs it.
The Korean alphabet, known as Onnmn, 'the vulgar characters,' consists of eleven vowels• and fourteen consonants. The letters are very
simple, and are made almost entirely of binations of vertical and horizontal strokes.
There is no letter f, p taking its place, and no v or )r, which, however, are in the language, and are otherwise provided for; b, d, j, z, and g are wanting, though discernible in speech in con nection with certain euphonic changes. and there is only one letter for r and 1, neither of which can begin a word, their place being taken by n, so that Chinese Hang, 'omu:e,' becomes nyany. A word may end with either a consonant or a vowel, differing in this respect from Japanese, in which every syllable is open. These letters are grouped into syllables, arranged in columns, which are read from right to left, as in Chinese. There is a cursive form used in the popular literature, etc.
Korean literature is mostly written in Chi nese, and consists of the Chinese classics and books relating to them, Chinese history and phi losophy, works on government, ethics, and the like. Many of them are valuable and throw light on the interpretation of Chinese, as they are accompanied by the native syntactical apparatus, and sometimes with translations in native Kore an. The vernacular has long been despised by the learned as a vehicle of literary expression, and there is little of much value in Onmun. There is no drama, and there are no ballads; tales are numerous; history, and stories from the Chi nese, moral treaties, and translations from standard Chinese works practically exhaust the list. The native language, however, has already emerged from its obscurity. The new political changes of 1897 were proclaimed in Onmun.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Works on the subject are alBibliography. Works on the subject are al- ready quite numerous, but their value to the general reader is minimized by the great diver sity of tramtsliteration systems employed. The appendix to Griffis, Corca, the Hermit Nation (New York, 1889), gives much bibliographical information. The most useful works are: Die tionnaire Coreen-francai.s, by the French mis sionaries (Yokohama, 18:30), and Grammaire Coreene (Yokohama, 1831) ; Underwood, Intro duction to the Korean. Spoken Language, with a Korean-English vocabulary (Yokohama, 1890) ; Scott, Carom Manual (Seoul, 1893) ; Gale, Ko rean-English Dictionary (London, 1897) ; and Han-Yong Cha Tyon: a Korcan-English Diction ary (Yokohama. 1897) ; Allen, Korean Tales (New York, 1 889) ; and a rich mine of informa tion in the Korean Repository (5 vols., Seoul, 1893-98), and its successor, the Korean Review (Seoul. 1901 et seq.).