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Language Lineage

Proto-Koreanic

The reconstructed ancestor of Korean and Jeju, largely inferred from Middle Korean, the language recorded in Hangul from the 15th century, and from the modern dialects.

c. 1st millennium BCE (reconstructed; dating debated)Probably southern Manchuria and the northern Korean peninsula
On this page
  1. Origins
  2. Reconstructing from Two Witnesses
  3. Where its languages are spoken
  4. Turning points
  5. Contested classifications

01

Origins

Koreanic is reconstructed mainly from Middle Korean, the language of the 15th- and 16th-century texts written in Hangul, and from the modern dialects and Jeju. Older stages are known only through Chinese characters, which record sound poorly. Where the family began is unclear. Many scholars think Koreanic spread southward through the peninsula from the north during the first millennium BCE, perhaps replacing Japonic languages spoken there before.

The three kingdoms of the early centuries CE, Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla, may not all have spoken Koreanic. Only Silla's language, which became the basis of later Korean after Silla unified the peninsula in 668, is securely Koreanic. The place names of the former Goguryeo territory are disputed: some read them as Koreanic, others as Japonic.

02

Reconstructing from Two Witnesses

With only two living languages, one of them recently split off, the comparative method can take Koreanic back only a short way. Earlier stages have to be pieced together from other kinds of evidence.

The most important is Middle Korean itself. The Hangul texts of the 15th and 16th centuries record pitch, consonant clusters and two consonants since lost, z (ㅿ) and β (ㅸ), and irregular alternations in them point further back. A noun such as namo 'tree' appears as namk- before a vowel, suggesting an older final consonant. Many nouns end in an h that surfaces only before particles.

The modern dialects add more. Where Seoul has lost the Middle Korean z, southeastern dialects and Jeju often have s: Middle Korean kʌzʌl 'autumn' is Seoul kaɨl but Jeju kɒsɨl. This suggests that z itself came from an earlier *s.

For the period before Hangul, scholars rely on Chinese-character sources: the Silla hyangga poems, place names in the Samguk sagi, the Gyerim yusa, a Chinese envoy's list of several hundred Goryeo words from the early 12th century, and native plant names in the 13th-century medical book Hyangyak gugeupbang. Each gives Korean words filtered through Chinese readings, so every interpretation depends on how Chinese was pronounced at the time.

On the map

Where its languages are spoken

Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. South KoreaKorean c. 51 million · Jeju c. 5,000–10,000
  2. North KoreaKorean c. 26 million
  3. United StatesKorean c. 1 million
  4. ChinaKorean c. 1–2 million

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 1st millennium BCEContested

    South into the peninsula

    Koreanic speakers spread south through the Korean peninsula. Whether they replaced earlier Japonic speakers, and when, is debated.

    Sources (2)
    • Whitman, John. 2011. Northeast Asian linguistic ecology and the advent of rice agriculture in Korea and Japan. Rice 4.
    • Lee, Ki-Moon & S. Robert Ramsey. 2011. A History of the Korean Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Outside the tree

Contested classifications

These disagreements may never be settled. Each position is given with its grounds, and no side is declared correct.

  • Minority position

    Japano-Koreanic

    Koreanic and Japonic share an ancestor

    Evidence for

    Korean and Japanese have strikingly similar grammar, including verb-final order, particles, and elaborate honorific systems, and Whitman and others have proposed sound correspondences. The Japonic tree records the same proposal.

    Evidence against

    Convincing cognates in basic vocabulary are few, and the similarities may come from long contact on the peninsula. Vovin, after decades of work on the question, rejected the relationship. It remains unproven.

    Sources (2)
    • Whitman, John. 2012. The relationship between Japanese and Korean. In The Languages of Japan and Korea, ed. Nicolas Tranter. London: Routledge.
    • Vovin, Alexander. 2010. Korea-Japonica: A Re-evaluation of a Common Genetic Origin. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.