By Quick facts
- Name in Korean
- 한국어 (hangugeo)
- Language family
- Koreanic › Korean
- Writing system
- Hangul — featural alphabet, left to right
- Where it began
- The Korean Peninsula
- Main countries
- South Korea, North Korea
- ISO 639-3 code
kor
Where Korean ranks
Korean is the 28th most-spoken language in the world by total speakers [1,2]. Here it is among its neighbours in the ranking, on one scale.
- 25Cantonese (Yue Chinese)86M
- 26Wu Chinese83M
- 27Persian (Iranian)82M
- 28Korean82M
- 29Amharic78M
- 30Thai71M
- 31Javanese69M
“How are you?” in Korean
어떻게 지내세요?
eotteoke jinaeseyo?
How are you?
Phrases: Omniglot — Useful phrases in Korean [9]. Other languages' phrases come from the sources on their own pages. Synthetic voice (ElevenLabs Eleven v3, voice “Sia”). Pronunciation is approximate and may not match a native speaker; Cantonese and Wu Chinese are not voiced because the model reads Chinese characters with Mandarin sounds.
A short history
Korean is the official language of both Koreas; the two differ in minor matters of spelling and vocabulary but both essentially follow the unified standards proposed by the Korean Language Society in 1933[3].
Before Hangul, Korean was written in Chinese characters (hanja). King Sejong's alphabet was completed in 1443 and promulgated in 1446 in the Hunminjeongeum, 'the proper sounds for instructing the people'; the 1446 manuscript is on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register[4,5]. Hangul became the dominant script only in the 20th century[4].
The design of Hangul
An alphabet of 14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels, invented under King Sejong and promulgated in 1446[4,5]. Letters are grouped into square syllable blocks, so it reads like an alphabet but looks like Chinese characters[7].
Featural alphabet. Letter shapes encode how the sound is made.
- Kind
- Featural alphabet
- Direction
- Left to right
- Took shape
- Created in 1443 under King Sejong and promulgated in 1446
- Line of descent
- Hangul (invented 1443)
- Traditional surface
- Paper
- Own digits
- No — uses the Western 0–9
- Also writes
- No other language among the 38 is written mainly in Hangul.
- Hangul (invented 1443)
Letters drawn from the mouth
The Hunminjeongeum Haerye of 1446 explains that the basic consonants picture the speech organs: ㄱ the tongue root closing the throat, ㄴ the tongue touching the gum ridge, ㅁ the mouth, ㅅ a tooth and ㅇ the throat[6,5].
Heaven, earth and person
Vowels are built from three strokes standing for heaven (a dot), earth (a horizontal line ㅡ) and a person (a vertical line ㅣ)[6].
A system you can compute
Because blocks combine letters by rule, Unicode encodes all 11,172 modern syllables algorithmically from their parts[7].
A designed alphabet
Hangul is one of very few scripts whose inventor and design rationale are documented: the 1446 Haerye explains each letter's shape[6,5].
Blocks, not lines
Letters stack into syllable squares: 한 is ㅎ + ㅏ + ㄴ. Keyboards type letters and software assembles the blocks as you go[7].
Explore the letters
g / k
The tongue root blocking the throat
1 / 18 · playing — pick a letter to stop
Korean's relatives among the 38
Korean belongs to the Koreanic family (Korean). These are the other languages with 50 million or more speakers in the same family; the closest — in the same branch — come first.
No other language among the 38 belongs to the Koreanic family.
Korean across the hub
The main page compares all 38 languages. Each link opens it on Korean.
- Preview it in the explorer →with all 38 side by side
- Hear it in the voice tour →“How are you?” in every language, spoken in turn
- Trace its script's family tree →from the first alphabets and Chinese oracle bones
- Compare its digits →ten ways to write 0–9
- See its share of speakers →an interactive breakdown by script, family and region
Frequently asked questions
How many people speak Korean?
About 82 million people speak Korean: 82 million as a first language and 1 million as a second, according to Ethnologue's 2026 figures. That makes it the 28th most-spoken language in the world by total speakers.
What script is Korean written in?
Korean is written in Hangul, a featural alphabet: letter shapes encode how the sound is made. It runs left to right.
How do you say "How are you?" in Korean?
In Korean, "How are you?" is 어떻게 지내세요? (eotteoke jinaeseyo?).
Where is Korean spoken?
Korean is spoken mainly in South Korea and North Korea. It began in the Korean Peninsula.
How old is the Korean script?
Hangul was completed in 1443 under King Sejong and promulgated in 1446. Its family line runs Hangul (invented 1443).
Sources
- Ethnologue — What are the top 200 most spoken languages? (2026)
- Wikipedia — List of languages by total number of speakers (Ethnologue 2026 figures, retrieved October 2026)
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Korean language
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Hangul
- UNESCO Silk Roads — Hunminjeongum Manuscript (Memory of the World, 1997)
- Wikipedia — Hunminjeongeum
- The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 18: East Asia (Han, Hiragana, Katakana, Hangul)
- Omniglot — Korean (Hangul)
- Omniglot — Useful phrases in Korean
Checked October 25, 2026. Speaker numbers are Ethnologue's 2026 estimates, which count each language separately (Arabic and Chinese varieties are listed one by one). Maps shade whole countries, not regions within them. Found an error? Tell us.
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