In Korean Language in Culture and Society, author Ho-min Sohn estimates that English comprises over ninety percent of the 20,000 loanwords currently used in Korean. New loanwords are imported from English on a daily basis as a result of global communication in the Internet era, and more will certainly have emerged in the ten years since this book was written.
Sohn lists the following twenty-six examples of English words which have permeated the Korean language:
The Korean vocabulary, Sohn estimates, consists of thirty percent native, sixty-five percent Sino-Korean (Chinese-character based), and five percent loanwords. Japanese speakers will find about three hundred cognates; for instance sŏm (Korean) vs. sima (Japanese), for island, and kom (Korean) vs. kuma (Japanese), for bear.
Korean and Japanese share many genetic and typological features. Through close contact with the Japanese people, especially during the thirty-five years of Japanese colonization that ended with World War II, Korean language, culture, and society underwent considerable influence from Japan and vice versa.
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