The two languages and cultures went their separate ways early on, however; the earliest Altaic-speakers appear to have encountered people speaking a Polynesian language as well as the indigenous Ainu people whose language is an isolate, related to no other living tongue on the planet. According to linguists, the Japanese language contains elements of all three of these. Japan was largely isolated throughout most of its history. China gave Japan its system of writing and its Buddhist faith and had some influence on Japanese art and architecture, but the culture that eventually developed in Japan was unique. For most of its history, Japan was a feudal society of small, warring territories ruled by local shogun, or warlords. During the time of the semi-legendary King Arthur in the West, Korea was divided into three kingdoms; eventually, the southeastern kingdom of Silla became dominant. A more-or-less unified Korean state began to emerge during the 14th century of the Common Era.

When you spend a semester during which you study abroad in Japan, you will find out that the current bone of contention with South Korea centers around pickled cabbage. Kimchi, known as kimuchee in Japan, is a spicy form of sauerkraut. Although it originated in Korea, the dish has become quite popular in Japan to the point that several Japanese companies now manufacture a prepared version of it. Koreans however insist that only their own native version is authentic. You’ll have an opportunity to find out for yourself during a semester abroad in South Korea or Japan.

North Korean typically refer to the Korean language as Chosnmal although it is also called urimal. The standard of North Korea is based on the way it is spoken in the capital P’yngyang while in the south the standard is the way it is spoken in Seoul. The differences between these two forms of the Korean language does not make it impossible for speakers of either group to communicate with each other because the differences are more or less equivalent to the Spanish spoken in Spain and the Spanish spoken in Latin America.

Since neither of these two views have been demonstrated decisively, those who do study the language prefer to refer to the Korean language as a language significantly distinct from the aforementioned groups. From a morphological point of view, the Korean language uses agglutination which is the process of adding affixes to the base of a word. Korean maintains a grammatical syntax whose base is Subject-Object-Verb. Japanese, Vietnamese, and the Korean languages are influenced heavily by the Chinese language.