User:Candiesrgood/Sandbox III/Han language

Han is the of Hani, with nearly all of its population having the ability to speak it fluently. It is widely considered to have three highly distinct dialects, though some sources describe the dialects as distinct languages. The official global regulatory body of the Han language is the, which governs the proper usage of the Han language.

Characteristics of Han include morphology with  (typically with  suffixes, such as –seumnida) to change or create new vocabulary, a flexible  utilising both  and, a relatively small phonemic inventory, and a noticeable lack of consonant clusters (e.g., [str] in English). Unlike the, which is alleged to be its parent language family, Hani has a different syntax and a large amount of vowels (a total of twelve), while in contrast Malayo–Polynesian languages typically have an average of only five vowels. As with other countries part of the, a sizeable amount of its vocabulary is adopted from.

The Han language is written in both and, with the former being of Korean origin. Hangul may appear, but is actually a phonemic alphabet which instead of being written sequentially, is organised into syllabic blocks called han. Each block is composed of at least two letters (at least one consonant and one vowel), but can fit up to six letters. , and was historically used before the adoption of Hangul, but today all are outdated. The usage of Hanja has rapidly declined over the decades, and is now taught only for legal and academic purposes.

Phonology
The Han language has 39 ; 24 and 15. This is in stark contrast to other languages which typically have an average of only 4 to 5 vowels and 16 to 22 consonants.

Vowels
Prior to change in the Han language due to with  and  (and for the, ), it had only three  (/a/, /i/, and /u/) and four  (/aj/, /uj/, /aw/, and /iw/). The figure for pure vowels later expanded to six (adding /e/, /ɛ/, and /o/) with the introduction of Chinese loanwords. The adoption of (from ) as the national script has led to the addition of two more (/ɯ/ and /ə/), bringing the number to its current eight.

Meanwhile, the original four compound vowels had all become obsolete and replaced by a new batch of seven new compound vowels (all adopted from Korean), doubling the total number of vowels from a original seven to fifteen.

Consonants
Similarly, consonants have changed due to also with mainly  and, further consolidated by the adoption of. However, unlike vowels, original found in  (the alleged parent language of Han) still remain; rather being replaced, consonants are instead simply added.

Glottal stops are not indicated. Glottal stops typically occur when; the word starts with a vowel such as oso (bear), or includes a dash followed by a vowel, like araljweo (to study).

Below is a chart of Han consonants, which are identical to those found in Korean;

Grammar
In the Han language, there are eight basic parts of speech: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions and particles. Han is a partially language; pronouns are inflected for number while verbs are inflected for focus, aspect and voice.

Verbs
Han verbs are morphologically complex; being conjugated by taking on a variety of affixes that reflect focus, aspect, voice, and other qualities.

Below is a chart of the main verbal, which consist of a variety of , , , and. Punctuation marks indicate the type of affix a particular bound is; e.g., hyphens mark prefixes and suffixes, while ⟨[affix]⟩ marks an infix place between the first consonant and the first vowel of a root word.

Nouns
Han are not, but are however, preceded by case-making particles. These follow the – the presence of this has made many linguists place it within the  as it is only found within it. There are three basic cases; (or, often inaccurately labeled );  (which may function as an , , or ); and.

The direct case is used for clauses. In clauses utilising the default grammatical voice of the Han language, the direct marks the   and the indirect marks the, corresponding to the role of the  in the English language. However, when utilising a more marked voice, the situation becomes the opposite as the direct marks the agent and the indirect marks the patient.

Han has been analysed as an language. However, in ergative languages where one of the voices forms an intransitive clause, in Han both voices are transitive, and so align well with neither nominative–accusative languages such as English nor with other ergative languages. The main ergative marker is the seo– (pronounced as [sə] not [se-o]). Meanwhile, the word mana (pronounced [ma-na]) is placed before a noun to indicate.

Pronouns
Like, personal are categorised by. Indirect forms of pronouns may also function as the. As nouns are gender-neutral, pronouns can be used to refer to both a male or a female.

The second person singular has two forms; hyo is the form while ga is the  which never starts a sentence. While gayo is plural, it may be used in place of the singular form to show respect.

Dialects
The Han language is split into three distinct different ; the spoken in, , and Han territories, the  spoken in , and the  spoken in  and the northern parts of Doshobei (coexisting with the Ansan dialect). The Ansan dialect is the standardised version of Han with official government documents, and political or economic exchanges being written or conducted in said dialect.

As a result of geographic isolation and political division between North and South Hani which persisted until the nineties, strong lexical, phonological, and grammatical differences have developed between the three dialects. An example of some dialectal differences are;
 * There are varying levels of Chinese loanwords, with the Solwon dialect having the most and the Shinan dialect having the least.
 * There is a notable lack of formality and in the Shinan dialect.
 * ng and the letter m is not present in the Shinan dialect, being both replaced by n. For example, yang (meaning "of") would be pronounced yan and seumnida (an affix stating a past action) would be pronounced sun-nida.
 * The Shinan dialect has five vowels and has only . Both the pure vowels and the compound vowels between the Solwon and Ansan dialects are the same.
 * The Shinan dialect preserves the usage of repetition to form new words (again, similar to other ), while the other dialects use the prefix deo in the place of the syllable.

Malayo–Polynesian languages
Below is a chart of Han and twenty Malayo–Polynesian languages (which is supposedly the parent language family of Han) thirteen words.

Classification of the Han language
Whilst Han is firmly believed by most mainstream linguists to be placed in the language family under the  languages, there is still debate on which subdivision should it be placed in and if whether it should be grouped by itself (under hypothetical the Han languages, which Han and its attested older forms comprises its single member).

Even despite the firm belief that it is an Austronesian language, some still propose links with other languages, including Korean and Japanese and others still believe it is a.

Koreanic hypothesis
Many Western linguists in the nineteeth century originally linked Korean to Han due to the presence of nearly identical phonemes, an morphology, a  order (though in Han it is flexible, with  being also used), an important system of, the common use of  as the national script, and a few lexical similarities (e.g., sippeo, oppa, sarang, and eopseo are found in both languages).

However, by the turn of the twentieeth century and the end of its, the relaxed immigration policies allowed further studies that had concluded that most similarities in morphology and word order were just both preexisting Malayo–Polynesian traits while the lexical similarities are the influence of Korean settlers and the mutual mass-borrowing of Chinese words (as they are both sinicised societies). The similarities in phonemes meanwhile, were due to the national adoption of –introduced by Korean settlers during the fifteenth century.

Although today the hypothesis is considered archaic, most amateurs still hypothesise it to be a Koreanic language or a sister language, sharing a common ancestor that had originated somewhere in Manchuria, where it traveled south to Korea then to Hani via Japan and Solweon.