In terms of the territorial size, Korea is a small country.
But, she is not a small country at all considering her big
population. The total population of North and South Korea
is approximately seventy million and it is enough to place
Korea in the 15th place in the world. In the aspect of language,
Korea is a huge country.
In terms of user's population, the Korean language is in the
13th place among several thousand languages
in the world including Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, English, Arabic,
Portuquese, Russian, Japanese, German, French, and Malay-Indonesian.
We can be proud of this.
Several reports say minor languages have disappeared in this
world so that only few languages are expected to remain in
the future. Leaning to this prospect, some insist that English
should be an official language and even our descendants should
learn English as their native tongue.
However,
language is not only a communication
method but also a cultural heritage containing the nation's
history and spirit. A nation makes a feature of its own language.
The nation that once looses its original language cannot be
called a nation any more. For example, it is not too much
to say that Manchuria tribe disappeared after it lost Manchu.
Our nation also faced with the crisis of loosing our language
under the rule of Japanese imperialism but our ancestors got
through the difficulty and kept our language.
We should maintain our nation's identity by keeping our original
language and writings. In one hand, we need to open our mind
to foreigners and foreign languages. We should keep pace with
the stream of the world's change by paying attention to foreign
languages and foreign cultures as well as succeeding and developing
our language and writings. That is the wisdom to live in this
Globalized world.