Why are some slogans in Japan and South Korea all in Chinese?

Because China was a very powerful country in ancient times, it had a great influence on the culture and language of Korea and Japan during the Tang and Song Dynasties. At present, more than half of the vocabulary in Korean is borrowed from Chinese (Chinese vocabulary accounts for 50% to 60% of daily Korean vocabulary, and almost all Korean names are from Chinese). These Chinese words can be written in Chinese characters, but since the pronunciation of each Chinese character can also be represented by Korean letters, the number of Chinese characters appearing in Korean books and periodicals has been greatly reduced in the past few years, and letters are gradually used to represent the sounds. Instead. Before 1950, Chinese characters were still the main written language, but with the rise of nativism after the Korean War, Chinese characters were gradually replaced by Korean phonetic notation. Unlike South Korea, North Korea has abolished Chinese characters early on.

Two thousand years ago, there were two different languages ??in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria. With the rise of the Silla Empire in the middle of the seventh century AD, the languages ??of the Korean Peninsula were unified by the Silla language. In the tenth century AD, a new dynasty moved its capital to "Kaesong" in the middle of the peninsula. At that time, the Kaesong dialect became the national language of Korea. In the late fourteenth century, the newly established Joseon Dynasty moved its headquarters to "Seoul". Because of the close relationship between Seoul and Kaesong, the language did not change much.

Chinese characters were introduced to the Korean Peninsula around the fourth century BC and became popular around the third century AD. From that time on, Korean was written using Chinese characters. At that time, some Chinese characters in an article expressed meaning, some only expressed sounds but not meaning, or the entire article might be written in Chinese. Since the introduction of Chinese characters, many Chinese words have gradually replaced their own pure Korean words. However, since Chinese characters are used to record Chinese rather than Korean, and ordinary people do not know how to use Chinese characters and Chinese, recording Korean is not an easy task. Since the invention of the Hunminjeongeum alphabet, the problem of being unable to record Korean has been solved. However, Chinese characters have always been used in academic and political circles. The phenomenon of Chinese characters being dominant only gradually changed in the 20th century.

The pronunciation of Chinese characters in modern Korean has left over the entry tone in ancient Chinese, so many linguists believe that the pronunciation of Chinese characters in modern Korean is similar to the pronunciation of Chinese characters in the Tang and Song Dynasties. This means that many Chinese characters are from the Tang and Song Dynasties. It was borrowed into Korean during the period. Nowadays, the pronunciation of Korean Chinese characters is similar to that of southern Chinese dialects (such as Cantonese). The southern dialects of my country also retain many ancient sounds from the Tang and Song Dynasties. On the contrary, the pronunciation of Korean Chinese characters is quite different from the pronunciation of modern Mandarin.

Over the past few hundred years, South Korea has been deeply influenced by my country. The use of Chinese vocabulary in Korean is considered to be more knowledgeable and appropriate. On the contrary, many pure Korean vocabulary with a long history are rarely used or forgotten. . For this reason, it is quite common for different words in Korean to only mean the same thing (just like taxi-taxi and bus-bus mean the same thing in Chinese), resulting in a very high number of words used in Korean today. In recent years, Korean non-governmental organizations have advocated the use of more purely Korean vocabulary, but the public feels unfamiliar with the rarely used purely Korean vocabulary, so the method of using both Chinese and Korean vocabulary will continue for a long time.

One of the three most difficult languages ??to learn in the world

Although it is very easy to learn and read the Korean alphabet, there are many phonetic changes in Korean pronunciation, including simplified sounds. Quite a few. Grammatically it is also much more difficult than Chinese, so listening and speaking in Korean is difficult.

The word order of Korean is very different from Chinese, but similar to Japanese. The word order of Korean is subject-object-verb; while the word order of Chinese is subject-verb-object, for example:

I buy a car - Chinese word order

I buy a car - Korean word order

When the subject or object is obvious, the subject or object can be omitted. Compared with Chinese, Korean sentences can omit more parts than Chinese sentences. The subject and object in Korean sentences need to be distinguished by suffixes like many languages, but they do not have the common parts of speech in European languages.

Korean has a special feature that other languages ??do not have, and that is "honorific language" (words of respect). During the conversation, appropriate words and endings should be chosen according to the relationship between each other (even the person in the conversation) and the occasion. Korean honorifics are different from Japanese ones.

When talking to elders, strangers (regardless of whether they are really older than you), or when the person in the conversation has a higher status than you, it is very rude to use inappropriate endings and vocabulary, and it is not appropriate to use it to yourself. Honorific words make people feel arrogant and arrogant.

Today's Standard Korean in South Korea is based on the dialect of the Seoul area. Different regions also have their own dialects, but there is no communication problem when communicating in Standard Korean.

According to early historical records, the origin of Korean is very unclear. It is generally believed that Korean evolved slowly from Koreans. Korean is characterized by the harmony of initial consonants, has little relationship with Japanese in grammar and vocabulary, and belongs to the Ula-Altaic language family.

The Chinese characters used by China and Japan were originally traditional Chinese characters. But later both countries carried out character reform. Some characters were simplified in my country but not in Japan; some characters were simplified in Japan but not in my country. Although some characters have been simplified in both countries, the simplified ones are different. So pay attention to their differences. When writing in Japanese, you must write Japanese Chinese characters, not simplified Chinese characters. The Japanese government carried out a writing reform in 1946 and stipulated the scope of use of some Chinese characters. There are 1,850 of them. This is called "when using Chinese characters". When used means "current use" or "should be used". Chinese characters other than these 1850 are no longer used and are instead denoted by kana. But this is only a government regulation. There are still people who use Chinese characters inappropriately according to their habits. On October 1, 1981, the Japanese government announced the implementation of the "Commonly Used Chinese Characters List", which stipulated 1,945 commonly used Chinese characters as "rough standards for the use of Chinese characters in general social life."

South Korea resumes using Chinese characters

Among the more than 4 million foreign tourists who visited South Korea in 1998, about 70% used Chinese characters because they did not understand that only Korean characters were used. The street signs have English pinyin so I feel inconvenienced. Therefore, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of South Korea proposed to the government to lift the ban on the use of Chinese characters, and South Korean President Kim Dae-jung signed a presidential decree on February 9, 1999, approving the use of Chinese characters on road signs and government documents.

South Korea legislated in 1948 to prohibit the use of Chinese characters in official government documents. In 1968, South Korea banned the use of Chinese characters in the form of a presidential decree. Since then, the proportion of Chinese characters in newspapers and books has dropped significantly. Now only the covers of books and the titles of newspapers use some Chinese characters, while the inner text almost no longer uses Chinese characters. Because the younger generation has fewer opportunities to be exposed to Chinese characters than the older and middle-aged generations, the phenomenon of Chinese character illiteracy is increasing.

The South Korean government stated that since most ancient texts are written in Chinese characters, the re-use of Chinese characters will help improve people’s understanding of history, and also promote communication between South Korea and countries and regions that use Chinese characters. of communication. Using Chinese characters to represent names and homophones can also improve the current confusion of homophones. The use of Chinese characters can also promote the development of tourism and attract tourists from China, Japan and Southeast Asian countries.

After the ban was lifted, it was immediately opposed by domestic groups that defend the Korean language. They were worried that using both Chinese and Korean characters would degrade the status of Korean characters. The practice of adding Chinese characters to street signs would reduce the readability of street signs. It's also a waste of money.

Currently, only street signs, names and homophones are allowed to use Chinese characters. The rest of the Chinese characters must still be written in Korean characters. In order to appease the dissatisfied feelings of some people, a more detailed list of language and laws will be announced later.