Korean (70 million speakers)
Korean is considered to be part of the Altaic family with a particularly close affinity to Tungusic, although much controversy surrounds this issue. As an Altaic language, Korean lacks gender, articles, and relative pronouns. Until the Hangul alphabet was invented in the 15th century, Chinese characters were used for writing. Chinese continued to be used as the predominant writing system until the 19th century and still remains in use for loan words along with Hangul in South Korea today.
Pragmatics
A vital part of the Korean grammar, honorifics are used for indicating varying grades of politeness and social relationships between speakers and their addressees. The honorific system consists of three subsystems: 1) speech styles, 2) subject honorifics, and 3) object honorifics. Conventionally, speakers recognize two honorific styles, deferential and polite, and four non-honorific styles: blunt, familiar, intimate, and plain. Each style has unique inflections and sentence endings and serves specific pragmatic functions. For example:
Declarative Verb Ending 'go' -(su)pnita kapnita deferential -(e)yo kayo polite -so kasso blunt -ney kaney familiar -e/a ka intimate -ta kata plain
Phonology
In Korean there are three phonemically different ways to
pronounce each of the consonants /p/, /t/, /c/, and /k/: lax, aspirated, and tense
(e.g. /p/, 
,
/p'/). Rules that govern the selection of sounds are obstruent* neutralization and
tensing. In obstruent neutralization, an aspirated or tense stop will become lax
when it falls at the end of a word and before other consonants if the obstruents
have the same place of articulation (e.g. pak, 'outside' > pak).
In tensing, the second obstruent will become tensed if it follows an obstruent (e.g. kaksi,
'bride' > kaks'i).
Lax pul 'fire' Aspirated 'grass' Tense p'ul 'horn'
* Obstruent: A consonant produced with an
obstruction of the air above the larynx. These include stops (/p/ and /b/),
fricatives (/f/ and /v/), and affricates (
and 
).
Korean at Stanford
