Angela Swanson, age 16, of Dekalb, I11., for her question:

WHAT IS THE BASIS OF THE KOREAN LANGUAGE?

The Korean language is spoken by the inhabitants of both North and South Korea. Although of uncertain linguistic affilation, Korean may well be distantly related to the Altaic languages or possibly to Japanese.

Modern standard Korean, promoted since the 1930s, is based on a dialect spoken in Seoul and is written in a native Korean alphabet called hangul, which was introduced in 1446. Before that time, Korean  was written exclusively in Chinese characters.

In South Korea, Korean is written both in its purely alphabetic form and in a mixed script that uses the original Chinese characters for word of Chinese origin. Chinese has had a major influence on the Korean vocabulary, contributing over half of its words.

Characteristic of Korean grammar is a system of honorifics  ¬endings and internal word marking s that reflect established social relationships. Word forms change depending on the speaker, the person spoken to a stranger or older person, a child or a friend and the person spoken about.