|familie=[[Altaiske sprogfamilie|altaisk]] eller isoleret sprog
|familie=isoleret sprog<ref name="google15">{{Citation | last = Song | first = Jae Jung | year = 2005 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=rIk52cJ1vDEC&pg=PA15 | title = The Korean language: structure, use and context | publisher = Routledge | page = 15| isbn = 978-0-415-32802-9 }}.</ref><ref>{{Citation | first1 = Lyle | last1 = Campbell | first2 = Mauricio | last2 = Mixco | year = 2007 | title = A Glossary of Historical Linguistics | publisher = University of Utah Press | contribution = Korean, A language isolate | pages = 7, 90–91 | quote = most specialists... no longer believe that the... Altaic groups... are related […] Korean is often said to belong with the Altaic hypothesis, often also with Japanese, though this is not widely supported}}.</ref><ref>{{Citation | first = David | last = Dalby | year = 1999{{ndash}}2000 | title = The Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities | publisher = Linguasphere Press}}.</ref><ref>{{Citation | first = Nam-Kil | last = Kim | year = 1992 | contribution = Korean | title = International Encyclopedia of Linguistics | volume = 2 | pages = 282–86 | quote = scholars have tried to establish genetic relationships between Korean and other languages and major language families, but with little success}}.</ref><ref>{{Citation | first = András | last = Róna-Tas | year = 1998 | contribution = The Reconstruction of Proto-Turkic and the Genetic Question | title = The Turkic Languages | publisher = Routledge | pages = 67–80 | quote = [Ramstedt's comparisons of Korean and Altaic] have been heavily criticised in more recent studies, though the idea of a genetic relationship has not been totally abandoned }}.</ref><ref>{{Citation | first = Claus | last = Schönig | year = 2003 | contribution = Turko-Mongolic Relations | title = The Mongolic Languages | publisher = Routledge | pages = 403–19 | quote = the 'Altaic' languages do not seem to share a common basic vocabulary of the type normally present in cases of genetic relationship}}.</ref>
Det koreanske sprogs klassifikation er omstridt. En del lingvister henregner det til den [[altaiske sprogfamilie]] (der bl.a. også omfatter [[tyrkisk (sprog)|tyrkisk]]), medens andre mener, at det udgør et isoleret sprog. Koreansk udviser dertil en række syntaktiske ligheder med [[japansk (sprog)|japansk]] og klassificeres derfor undertiden sammen med dette. [[Morfologi (lingvistik)|Morfologisk]] set er koreansk et [[agglutinerende]] sprog og [[syntaks|syntaktisk]] set er det et [[SOV]]-sprog, dvs. at den normale led-rækkefølge er [[subjekt (grammatik)|subjekt]]-[[objekt (grammatik)|objekt]]-[[verbum]]. En simpel koreansk sætning demonstrerer begge disse karakteristika:
