Should I learn German or Korean?
German
The German language, Deutsch, written in Latin script, is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. One of the major languages of the world, it is estimated to have approximately 90–95 million people speaking German as a first language, 10–25 million speaking it as a second language, and 75–100 million speaking it as a foreign language. This would imply approximately 175–220 million German speakers worldwide.
The language is known today as German is believed to have originated from Proto-Germanic, which began to develop around 2000 B.C., as people began to settle in western areas of the Baltic Sea. The first-ever record of the German language dates back to a time when the Romans came into contact with inhabitants of the Rhine-Danube area during their occupation in the first century BC. Since then German has gone through many changes, from Old High German (from about 700 AD to the eleventh century); Middle High German (from about 1050 to 1350); Early New High German (1350 to 1600) to New High German (from about 1600 to the present). Modern-day German, often referred to as “High German”, or Hochdeutsch, used as the language of administration, higher education, literature, and the mass media, is likely to be unrecognisable from the language that the Romans first observed.
It is the most spoken native language within the European Union. German ranks the sixth most popular language in the world, after Chinese, English, Hindi-Urdu, Spanish, and Russian. German is also widely taught as a foreign language, especially in Europe, where it is the third-most taught foreign language after English and French, and the United States. The language has been influential in the fields of science and technology, where it is the second most commonly used scientific language and among the most widely used languages on websites. The German-speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of annual publication of new books, with one-tenth of all books (including e-books) in the world being published in German.
German is an official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a co-official language of Luxembourg, Belgium and parts of southwestern Poland, as well as a national language in Namibia. It is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many varieties existing in Europe and other parts of the world. It is also recognised as a minority language in Brazil (9 municipalities), Czech Republic, Denmark (Syddanmark), Hungary, Romania, Russia (Azovo German National District), Slovakia (regional).
As with many languages, German has evolved with society and sociopolitical factors have helped shape the language as it is today. New words from other languages have been adopted by German speakers. Others have been introduced into the German language due to more interaction with foreigners either due to migration, trade, war or the development of new technology from cinema to the Internet.
Korean
On the other hand, Korean, Hangugeo in South Korean; and Chosŏnmal in North Korean, written in Hanguel, is an East Asian language (Altaic/Koreanic language family) spoken by about 82 million people.
Modern Korean, the language we now know, is an honorific language that evolved around the 15th century, in order from Middle Korean, Old Korean, and finally the Original – Proto-Koreanic language, that believed to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria. The study suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted or merged with the descendants of the homogeneous Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them); both had an influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families leading to the evolution of a single language during the unification of the sixth to the fourteenth century. Due to the ambiguity of the relationship between Korean and other languages, it is believed to be a member of the Altaic family or language isolate. Together with Korean and the Jeju language (spoken in the Jeju Province and considered somewhat distinct) form the Koreanic language family. Grammatically Korean is very similar to Japanese and about 70% of its vocabulary comes from Chinese. It is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country, also recognised as a minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin Province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia and Central Asia.
Besides the Korean peninsula, there are many native Korean speakers living abroad. The regions with the biggest Korean populations are in the United States, China, Japan, Canada, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Russia, Australia, and Kazakhstan, of whom 51.6 million live in South Korea, 25.6 million in North Korea, more than 2.7 million in China, approximately 2 million in the United States, and about 800,000 in Japan.
While Chinese writing has been known in Korea for over 2,000 years, it was used widely during the Chinese occupation of northern Korea from 108 BC to 313 AD. By the 5th century AD, the Koreans were writing in Classical Chinese – the earliest known example of this dates from 414 AD. However, due to the differences between Chinese and Korean, Chinese characters could not adequately denote Korean speech, and, only the elite could afford the time necessary to study Chinese. So King Sejong (1397-1450) the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty, commissioned the invention of a phonetic script both more efficient and more accessible to the common people.
Later three different systems were devised to write Korean with Chinese characters: Hyangchal (향찰/鄕札), Gukyeol (구결/口訣) and Idu (이두/吏讀).