The Handbook of Korean Linguistics presents state-of-the-art overviews of the linguistic research on the Korean language. • Structured to allow a range of theoretical perspectives in addressing linguistic phenomena • Includes chapters on Old Korean and Middle Korean, present-day language policies in North and South Korea, social aspects of Korean as a heritage language, and honorifics • Indispensable and unique resource not only for those studying Korean linguistics but cross-linguistic research in general

The 'Korean wave' in music and film and Korea's rise to become the twelfth economic power in the world have boosted the world-wide popularity of Korean language study. The linguistic study of Korean, with its rich syntactic and phonological structure, complex writing system, and unique socio-historical context, is now a rapidly growing research area. Contributions from internationally renowned experts on the language provide a state-of-the-art overview of key current research in Korean language and linguistics. Chapters are divided into five thematic areas: phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, semantics and pragmatics, sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics, and language pedagogy. The Handbook includes cross-linguistic data to illuminate the features of Korean, and examples in Korean script, making it suitable for advanced students and researchers with or without prior knowledge of Korean linguistics. It is an essential resource for students and researchers wishing to explore the exciting and rapidly moving field of Korean linguistics.

Vocabulary learning is the single most important component of second-language acquisition. In cases where the second language is unrelated to the learner's native tongue, this task presents special challenges because there are typically few clues in a word's form to assist in learning and remembering its meaning. This book offers a solution to this problem for students of Korean. The Handbook is the first ever "root dictionary" of Korean designed for second-language learners. Useful for students at all levels, it contains more than 1,500 vocabulary lists consisting of words built from a shared root. These lists offer a unique and efficient way for students to acquire new words. Upon encountering a word, students can consult the lists for its component roots and discover many other semantically related words built from the same elements. An introduction provides an overview of Korean vocabulary and detailed instructions on how to use the word lists. A pronunciation guide outlines the major principles determining the pronunciation of compounds and other multipart words in Korean.

This book represents an effort of around five years of part-time research, study, and writing by the author. In addition to assembling and organizing large amounts of accurate - and current - information from nearly countless sources, Mr. McDonough has also striven to describe the Korean Language in clear, engaging prose. Although written with beginning and intermediate learners in mind, even advanced users should find this handy book quite useful. Some of this data is very hard to find in any reference source (in English, anyways) and this book is much more accessible than others written by native Korean authors, professional linguists, academics, and the like. Naturally, explaining a foreign language requires some grammar terminology. However, this has been minimized and all terms are clearly explained in simple language, and also defined in a convenient glossary at the beginning of the book. The Handbook is meant to be a solid introduction to the grammar and structure of the language, as well as a reference guide to be consulted as needed. Everything you should need is very clearly laid out, with over 50 tables and lists, as well as an index. Plenty of examples are provided as well. This is the only book of its kind written in English currently available, and the only book that contains such a well-organized and useful collection of information. Part of its unique value is in the author's careful editing and the exclusion of a lot of older, rarer 'legacy' grammar material that tends to haunt many Korean books. Further aiding the user, notes about frequency and general usefulness are included in many places. In addition to being a self-contained educational resource, the Handbook would nicely complement classroom study as well as the various textbooks on the market. Lastly, this might be a useful tool for Korean natives studying English. The author comes from a computer science background, and initially set out to create a user's guide similar to those in that field (really, just for his own use). That project evolved into much more, and this book is the result. A companion vocabulary-focussed volume is due out later in 2015, and an advanced book in 2016. Other learning tools are planned as well, including an interactive Internet-based application for computers and smartphones.

"The Routledge Handbook of Korean as a Second Language aims to define the field, and to present latest research in Korean as a Second Language (KSL). It comprises a detailed overview of the field of KSL teaching and learning, discusses its development, and captures critical cutting-edge research within its major subfields. As the first handbook of KSL published in English, this book is of particular interest to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, language teachers, curriculum developers, and researchers in the fields of KSL and applied linguistics. While each chapter will be authored by internationally renowned scholars in its major subfields, the handbook also aims to maintain accessibility, so that it can also be of value to non-specialists"--

A lively and fascinating introduction to the sound, structure, and history of Korean.

This book provides a detailed survey of the Korean language, covering its speakers, genetic affiliation, historical development, dialects, lexicon, writing systems, sound patterns, word structure, and grammatical structure. It is designed to be accessible to a wide readership, and provides a wealth of data in a user-friendly format that does not presuppose an in-depth knowledge of the latest linguistic theories. It will be used by general linguists and Korean linguists who are interested in the typological characteristics of the language from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and by undergraduates and graduate students in those disciplines who seek a comprehensive introduction to the linguistics of Korean. Likewise, advanced students of the Korean language and language educators will find it offers valuable insights into lexical, phonological, morphological and syntactic aspects of the language for their purposes.