What is the Difference between Korean, Japanese and Chinese
Korea, Japan and China are three different countries. The people of these countries look similar and one cannot tell the difference between them. Similarly, the languages of these countries also appear similar and a common person cannot recognize the difference between them. Chinese language can be called mother of other two languages and it is an old language. Many linguist experts believe that Korean and Japanese belong to same family, Altaic, while other believe that both are isolated languages. Here we are discussing difference between these two languages.
Korean
Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. More than 78 million people speak Korean around the world. It is ranked as 15th most spoken language of world. Almost a millennium ago, people started to write Korean language in Hinja, which is an adaptation from Chinese characters. During the 15th century, Sejong the Great commissioned a new writing system called hangul. However, it was not commonly used for centuries. In 20th century people start using this system more widely.
Japanese
Japanese language is spoken by 120 million people, not only in Japan but in other countries as well, where Japanese people live as immigrants. According to ranking Japanese is 9th most spoken language of world. As compared to other languages Japanese has small sound inventory, however Japanese vowels are pure. Japanese language is written in Kanji, which is also a Chinese script.
Chinese
Chinese language is not just a language but family of languages. More than One fifth of the world population speaks Chinese, usually as their native language. Mandarin is the most spoken language from the Chinese family; others are Wu, Cantonese and Min. Standard Chinese is actually Mandarin Chinese, which is based on Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is official language of China, Taiwan and Singapore.
Korean vs Japanese vs Chinese
Chinese is not just an isolated language, rather it is a group of languages which have many other languages like Mandarin, Wu and Min. Korean is 15th most spoken language, while Japanese is at 9th number, Chinese have the honor of most spoken language of the world. Chinese has its own characters, while Japanese has own Chinese characters called Kanji, and Korean also owned Chinese characters called Hanja. Later, Japanese and Korean developed their own writing systems. Korean and Japanese are considered closely related as many people think that they belong to Altaic group of languages, while Chinese does not belong to any such group. In Chinese language, Chinese characters are used, in Korean Hangeul characters are used and in Japanese language three different characters are used i.e. kanji, Hiragana and Katakana.
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