Koreanic languages

Koreanic is a small language family consisting of the Korean and Jeju languages. The latter is often described as a dialect of Korean but is mutually unintelligible with mainland Korean varieties. Alexander Vovin has also suggested that the Yukjin dialect of the far northeast should be similarly distinguished. Korean has been richly documented since the introduction of the Hangul alphabet in the 15th century. Earlier renditions of Korean using Chinese characters, however, are much more difficult to interpret. All modern varieties are descended from the Old Korean of the state of Unified Silla, which unified the Three Kingdoms of Korea. What little is known of other languages spoken on the peninsula before the late 7th-century Sillan unification comes largely from placenames. Some of these languages are believed to have been Koreanic, but there is also evidence suggesting that Japonic languages were spoken in central and southern parts of the peninsula. There have been many attempts to link Koreanic with other language families, most often with Tungusic or Japonic, but no proposed genetic relationships has been conclusively demonstrated.