Introduction:
Korean is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country. In South Korea, it is known as 한국어/韓國語 (hangugeo), and in North Korea, it is known as 조선말/朝鮮말 (chosŏnmal). It is an East Asian language spoken by about 77 million people. Korean is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia, and Central Asia. It is a recognized minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin Province, China.
The linguistic homeland of the Korean language is believed to be somewhere in Manchuria.
Historical and modern linguists classify Korean as a language isolate; that is it does not have any close relative or other languages belonging to the same family. It, however, does have a few extinct relatives which together with Korean itself and the Jeju language (spoken in the Jeju Province and considered somewhat distinct) formed the Koreanic language family.
Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean, which in turn descends from Old Korean, which descends from the Proto-Koreanic language which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria.
Chinese characters arrived in Korea, together with Buddhism during the Proto-Three Kingdoms era in the 1st century BC. They were adapted for Korean, and became known as Hanja, and remained as the main script for writing Korean for over a millennium.
The number writing system in the Korean language is quite complex. There are two distinguished numbering systems in the Korean language.
They are ‘Native Korean Numbers’ and ‘Sino-Korean Numbers’. The numbers are written and pronounced totally differently in both these systems. Sino-Korean numbers are used for dates, money, time, addresses, and numbers above 100.
