Sunday is Han’geul (Han’g??l) Day, the day that celebrates the Korean writing system.
It used to be a legal day off, but Korea had too many of those and Han’geul Day was one of the first to go. Now it is just one of those officially designated days that still get called “national holidays” and require little of the government other than that the prime minister read a speech. There are always events for young people, fun and sometimes delicious games with Korean characters, the usual shots of foreigners at Korean writing contests, and various small events around the country.
As anyone who has studied Korean has been told time and time again, Han’geul Is The Most Scientific and Most Superior Writing System in History.
Which is why there is a (very) small group of Koreans who are trying to export it. Not as used with Korean, mind you, but as an alternative writing system for languages that don’t have their own or that have awkwardly adapted the Latin alphabet (romaja) for their own purposes. Theorhetically, potential markets would include Tetum and other small languages in Asia, supposedly for being more suitable for their phonetic characteristics. I think that might really be true in some cases, but some fanatical “Hang’eulists” once spent months teaching it to a Thai hill tribe that was doing well enough with romaja and the stories of the tribe’s desperation for a writing system were greatly exaggerated. They did, however, get one young man to learn to write letters home to his mother using that Most Superior Writing System, Han’geul.
40 Comments
I heard one angry mom yelling at her kindergarten-age daughter today about being able to tell the difference between ??° and ??. It was a “Most Superior Yelling Lesson” as well.
Hanguel is a good writing system. However, the rest of the world, with the exception of China, use Roman letters. I know every Korean will scream about this, but I think it is time for Korea to move on to English letters.
Sometimes, even superior microprocessor like Motorola 68000 has to give in to Intel 8080 due to popularity and the market share. Things do get done faster if people can just COMMUNICATE better.
Koreans should go forward, not backward. Time to move on to Roman writing system. If Koreans can be like Dutch who speak English and write English well, then Korea can be the most prosperous country in Asia, surpassing Japan.
No, reintroducing hanja here and there would be a way of going forward if anything. Roman letters just don’t work for Korean.
As for the op, there doesn’t seem to be a problem with that. A lot of languages have two writing systems and don’t mind that. Inuit, Cree, Uigur, Mongolian, Moldovan/Romanian, etc. If a writing system works for a language then there’s no problem - the biggest hurdle is in getting people to become literate. Once that’s accomplished everything else is much easier.
I designed a slightly modified form of Hangul to write English and it works just fine. It’s harder to tell the etymology of a word, but on the other hand the phonetic nature of the letters lets you know if the speaker is using an accent or not. Bit of a tradeoff.
From what I can tell from the Tetum article though, hangul wouldn’t really help with anything. Sometimes though people will choose a script besides the Roman just to stress their individuality, even if they didn’t create it themselves. That’s what the Cree and Inuit alphabet is like, even though a European created it.
One of the ugliest things in the world is Romanized Korean.
However, the rest of the world, with the exception of China, use Roman letters.
??‘????
Π?Π???
ΧΧ?
etc etc…
I had debated saying something, but it was just too easy.
Diversity is interesting, but language and writing system are just communication tools. The more widely accepted, the better it does its job-communication.
Can you imagine Koreans using their own operating system? The Japanese have tried this, I believe. And, some efforts into creating own operating system, a Linux spin-off, continues even today between Japan, Korea and China.
Yet, these systems will only making things difficult. The Tower of Babel. Different languages do create jobs. But, people lose out in the end, engaging in futile and barren work of language translation.
Baduk!
Language just a communication tool?
Comparing it with a computer o/s?
I personally speak three languages fluently, and struggle with two more. Each language is a mirror of the unique culture it is used in. There are some fortunate people with the ability to think (to process information) in other ways, but for most of us language is the key in forming our minds, thoughts, beliefs… our very identity as a human being. Each lanugage contains a unique and rich culture, thought process, and perception about this world.
English is a wonderful language (also the most influential) but your ‘all for efficiency’ statement makes me shudder. Is your idea of a wonderful place to live with peolple who think and talk like you do? Do you consider that to be “efficient” and the end to strive for?
Also a single language system would be the most inefficient system effectively slowing down the developemnt of human-race. Too grandiose? Please pay attention to modern network theories, where it shows that a healthy network exists only when sufficient diversity exists. Natural networks are filled with redundancies that most humans would deem “inefficient” but which are actually the most viable and effective way for a healthy survival. Your immune system network, blood vessel network, hormone network, the food chain network, and even man made networks (that grows so much it syncs with nature and leaves our hands) such as power grid networks, telephone networks, and Internet networks all obey to network laws. Language itself is also a network, a single laguage is a network unto itself and the world is a big network interweaved with various language networks. Of course some nodes(languages) are more powerful and attract more links and they become hubs (like English). While hubs play a very important role in the health of a network, turning all the nodes into hub clones in the name of (your)efficiency will have very visible consequences.
Sorry for the long winded reply folks… got worked up by baduk over-simplifying languages….
Books to recommend:
On Network theory:
Linked
On Natural Sync and its Relationship with Network theory:
Sync
On language:
How the Mind Works
Also please keep up-to-date with various science publications.
Baduk said, “Diversity is interesting,…”
Just interesting? Diversity is the key to the vibrant present we live in. If you want to pass on to your great great great~~~ grandchildren this vibrant world, keep this world diverse!
And I do find your opinions to be diverse Baduk,
Didn’t mean to write the above posts so aggressively, I apologize if it came on a bit strong…
Going to sleep… too emotional with no sleep
Are we sure the Koreans REALLY invented Hangul?
I can not agree whatsoever with what Baduk writes. It is insanity to expect a culture to adopt another method of writting simple for the sake of expediency. If one were to remove all the uniqueness to a culuture, than the world would be a boring place. Also, the romanization of Hangul is so bad that I would rather read the Hangul than the roman characters any day on a subway map.
One thing I’ve noticed too, that is crazy, is how certain business take an English phrase and render it into Hangul. When I would go to Starbucks, for example, most people there are Korean and obviously speak and read Korean quite well too, yet I find a sign that reads “????????Ό ??Ό??” (cinnamon powder spelled in Hangul) instead of “?°?Ό ?°??¨”, which is Korean for cinnamon powder, unless I’ve mispelled it. Why in God’s name would a Korean business that has mostly Koreans for customers use some bastardization of Hangul when everyone would understand the Korean and they could always run English underneath the Korean as a subtitle!? The Korean Starbucks management needs to check themselves because their business should reflect the culture and not the other way around.
Hangul Day
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
Hangul Day, originally uploaded by Adium.
i read on marmot earlie…
?³??Όis the correct spelling. Young people in Starbuck are in a fantasy land. They want to feel that they are in a foreign country(the US), not in Korea. They pay $5 for a cup of coffee for that experience. “Cinnamon powder” works better.
Ability to speak, read and write English is becoming so important in Korea. English and Chinese (yes, I think bringing back Hanja is a good idea) are important languages for Korean survival.
A country must be willing to change. Sticking to the old and the familiar will only sandbag Koreans from going forward.
the first world nations of india and the philippines both use english. korea should take note.
happy birhtday, hangul!
However, the rest of the world, with the exception of China, use Roman letters
Arabic languages, Japanese, Hebrew (I think), russian, various slavic langguages, thai, turkish (I think), Indian or various dialects (I think) and others.
By the by, ???Έ was used during the first few centuries as a tool to transcribe foreign languages. You can find such “books” as early as the 1500s [?¨???ζ?] and the late as the end of the 18th Century [ζ?Ή?¨?‘??§?]. Some are glossaries ? [ζ?Ή?¨?‘??§?] is a Chinese Korean Manchu Mongol Japanese “dictionary” ? some are texts transcribed and translated from a foreign language ? like the Manchu version of [? ?ζ²? ] and [?°?? ???]. Of course these texts usually did a poor job of transcribing the pronounciation ? since Mongol and Manchu have twice as many vowels as Korean, for a start. And yes they look very much alike, in a way, the English/French/whatever books of Modern Korea, where every sentence is hangulized, leading learners to read the ???Έ [? ????? ??΄??? ???] instead of deciphering the original, something that only someone who has taught his mother tongue to Koreans will know how irritating it is.
T?Όrkish has been using Romaja for a while now [you see, they want us to believe they are Europeans, and using the Arabic script, as they did until the 19th Century, wouldn't do...]
A lot of languages seem to be moving toward using the Roman alphabet. Blame it on cell phones and SMS messaging. Seven years ago, most signs in Ulaanbaatar (for example) were written in the Mongolian version of Cyrillic. But these days, Roman letters are everywhere.
Yes, everyone should start using English and also give up kimchi for cole slaw. Next, “modernize” your appearance by genetically engineering your children to be white and blond. Maybe you could somehow move the Korean peninsula closer to Europe and join the EU. It would probably be more practical to just become the 51st American State. Finally, baduk, and all the other self-hating Koreans can achieve their dream of turning themselves into a mirror image of an Anglo-Saxon people.
By the way, baduk, the Intel processors you admire so much were designed in the US, where there is no official language and the voter information pamphlets contain a dozen languages. This freedom and diversity in the US is what allows so many diverse peoples to be so creative and dynamic.
But seriously, this madness of violently transforming language and culture for the sake of “efficiency” or “modernity” is chillingly familiar. Stalin, Mao and Kim Il-Sung embraced the same utter contempt for tradition and humility. To see this madness uttered by someone in a free country in the 21st century highlights the depth of the crisis in wisdom that we face today.
The 21st century person is so rootless that he’d trade in his own language, culture and maybe his own self for a shiny replacement. How sad for all of us…
By the way, Baduk, the Intel processors you admire so much were designed in the US, where there is no official language
The Intel processors were designed in California, where English is the official language.
g_travan,
Where have you been for the last two decades?
1)Kimchi is becoming cole slaw or pickled cabbage. Have you tasted Gimuchi, the Japanese Kimchi?
2) Koreans use thick white foundation to make them look white. Some do look good.
3) I think there are more (died)Blond in Seoul than in New York.
4) Koreans are watching American movies and reading Time magazines.
5)Move the Korean peninsula closer to Europe? Daily flight to most European and American cities.
6)Join the EU? Korea may someday be invited to join G7. Kick France and England out. These are poor bastards blew all their money during WWII.
7) More practical to just become the 51st American State? Why not? If it makes Korea more prosperous and peaceful, why not? Why not, really?
8)All the other self-hating Koreans can achieve their dream of turning themselves into a mirror image of an Anglo-Saxon people? If it works, it works. If it puts breads on the table and let me ride a Mercedes-Bentz, why not?
Why not really? What works is what works. What is wrong with learning English to receive advanced Anglo-Saxon technology and modern civilization? Do you want Koreans to stay at Africaneer level, no technology and starving?
Change and get ahead. What works is what works. Korea can surpass Japan by changing quickly into international cosmopolitan society. Yet, hardworking Koreans will do much better than Philippines or India because strong physical constitution and mental acumen. I hope Koreans will match and surpass Europeans in physical, mental and cultural arena. See Park JiSung playing at ManU. Or, Korean female Golfers.
Koreans have arrived.
DDa, Turkish uses Roman letters because of the vowel harmonization. They place a lot more importance on that than Arabic does which is why the characters don’t work well. Russian letters would work fine too, in theory.
Baduk, since you’re all about efficiency I suggest you pick one of these languages to support:
http://www.interlingua.com
http://www.idolinguo.org.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/interlingua
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ido
Follow the example set by the US of A. The US is always willing to change and try new thing. This factor alone puts her well ahead of other countries such as England or Canada that are busy protecting their old cultures - the way things has been.
When their young people buy American rap music albums, their music industry dies. The same things happen in other industries. After losing all industries, these people go hungry.
Korea needs to change and change fast to catch up. This is not the time to cling to the local and the out-dated writing system. Let’s move on to 21st century. Internationalize!
Baduk, spare Korea from your Nazi ideas. Just get plastic surgery, dye your hair blond, get blue contacts, move to the US, and learn proper English.
Then you’ll be an American and you can stop trying to force everybody else to be one. What you’re saying is no different than Hitler or Stalin. You’re totally insane!
Baduk,
If for some inexplicit reason Korean became the new world language, because for example ??¨??° came back from the dead and gave all Koreans superhuman powers, endowed Korea with all the resources and manpower it would need to become a superpower the likes of which has never been seen before and never will be seen again, in that case do you think Americans would be willing to dump English and their way of life to be more Korea like, just because Korea happened to be in vogue? Or less drastically, would under any circumstances they switch the alphabet for ???Έ?
What I am asking is that do you think Americans themselves would be prepared to make such changes as you suggest for Korea and do you think it would even be possible?
Second of all, people have been asking you this but you have ignored their questions.
1#: Don’t you think that romanized Korean would be much more difficult to use than ???Έ?( If not, what system would you suggest best captures the way Korean sounds?)
2#: What would be the benefits of romanizing Korean rather than just learning the alphbet alongside it?
Re: the Turks, I’m sure that DDA already knows this, but it?s worth pointing out that the Turks aren?t the only ones who switched from the Arabic writing system to Roman characters. Arabic was formerly used to write Malay/Indonesian and Swahili, and they have both switched to Roman characters. In this case, it wasn?t really out of aspiration to be European as much as it was due to the lack of vowels. Arabic letters, like Hangeul, are really suitable only for writing a single language. I have heard some Farsi speakers outside Iran also would like to switch to Roman characters as the Arabic alphabet is also apparently unsuitable for Farsi too.
All this talk of “rationalizing” alphabets to mimic English is very ironic. If anything, English is the language in most need of a sensible alphabet or spelling system.
One unmentioned problem with switching scripts is that all the existing libraries become useless. Children in Turkey cannot read older books. They can only read books that have been reissued in the Latin alphabet.
As for Farsi, I have heard of some movements to simplify the spelling using Arabic script, but as an Iranian-American, I must say that any talk of switching scripts is very alarming. Farsi spelling using Arabic is very easy, and far easier than English spelling. You couldn’t have a Spelling Bee in Farsi, since the spelling of the words is pretty easy, except for a few weird words.
There are also deep cultural links that are broken in taking such a drastic step. For one thing, even today, calligraphy is extremely important as an artform. Further, Iranians give huge importance to their literary tradition, and switching alphabets would render all the wonderfully created older books to become obsolete. There will always be “forgotten” books that will be overlooked and not re-issued in a new version, and these will be lost forever to succeeding generations.
Finally, Arabic is an important language in Muslim countries like Iran, and it is very offensive to suggest ditching the Arabic alphabet for, of all things, a Latin alphabet. Such suggestions serve no purpose and only re-inforce the feeling among Muslims that they are under assault from outside secular forces.
Languages certainly evolve and sometimes change quite dramatically. However, it is deeply unwise to just ditch one’s long-held traditions out of a feeling of inferiority. In fact, many oppressive nations, like China, attempt to wipe out linguistic diversity to forcibly erase and assimilate different cultures.
I personally admire India, which has so many languages that its ballots often don’t have any words, but just symbols for parties. The vastness and variety of this world are wonderful, especially in languages. Attempting to violently reduce this diversity just to ape the eminent powers of the day is a dangerous fantasy.
“English is the language in most need of a sensible alphabet or spelling system.”
Attempts have been made.
I did not answer #1 fully.
It is simple.
??±g
??΄n
??·d
..
? ?a
? ?ae
..
Just match one Hangul to one or two alphabets. Korean people are smart. They can immediately distinguish Korean from English, even if two languages use same writing system.
Think about a youngster in Korea, reading and writing. He can immediately be able to read English, albeit in wrong pronounciation. Think about advantage.
Progress,people! Move forward and enjoy prosperity. Or, stick to the old way and starve(See NK).
i agree with progress, and i know the pain involved in leaving old ways behind to move on, evolve, make progress. the best thing south korea could do is to change all of their education to english, from primary through university. it works in singapore (which has four official languages, i believe) without any loss of mother tongue. speak korean at home, speak english in school and at work. it’s simple, efficient and a necessary process if progress is to be made, no matter how difficult the transition period would be. it’s time for koreans to stop thinking about short term gains and press on to greater progress and higher goals.
why spend all day limping to the hospital when you can pay some money and take a taxi?
And for more language trivia, the Uighur script used in Mongol comes from Arabic, too, via Syriac. It used to be written like Arabic, right to left, and top to bottom, and turned 90?° left [under the influence of Chinese], to be read top to bottom, and left to right, which is quite unusual.
Judy,
Don’t you think that Singapore is an interesting example considering the fact that it had no national language because in fact no such nationality existed? As much as it may have been for competitiveness it was a necessary prerequisite to keep the four major language groups from fighting it out in the streets. English was chosen as the official language, but the remaining languages such as Chinese and Tamil continued to be taught in schools in part because they recognized and accepted the fact that it would take too long to build a up a real national identity and people would give up something as important to them as language.
Not only does Korea have a strong national identity, it also has a 2,500 to 5,000 year history, and while not perfectly homogeneous is at least mostly. How many countries similar to Korea in size and history do what you propose? Singapore doesn’t count in the sense that it was not a “real country” to begin with, whereas Korea clearly was.
Why is it necessary for every child to be educated in English when only a small percentage of those children will be working in English in their future lives. What about Chinese for instance? Baring the destruction of the country, China will over take the US one day and Korea will winde up haveing a much stronger trading relationship. It might be a century later, but it will happen. But even in that case, how many children will actually directly benefit by having been educated in Chinese either?
That should read:
and people would never give up something as important to them as language.
Koreans don’t have to Romanize. I personally think the Vietnamese people have lost something because they were forced to Romanize.
Let Korea be with their Han Gul.
Japan does fine with their phoenetic writing system.
Although, after learning of it, I very much was surprised that Japan had their sound based system of writing.
Anyway, I think most Koreans will agree that Han Gul is fine with us, and that many Korean sounds don’t come out well with the Alphabet.
Kim. Gim.
Park. Bak. Pak.
None of these are the actual sounds in Korean.
Waygugin,
Do you know who are doing a good job of keeping Hangul? NKs. In NK, a radio is not “??Ό???€”but “??????”. They invented a Korean word for every English word.
To build a car, one needs to know a lot of English words. That is just the way it is. NKs, even if they make cars, will not be able to do after-service. They don’t know English words.
Think about why Korean companies these days test their new hires on English. Just selling things in Korea is not enough to feed Korean population. Koreans must make and sell things outside of Korea if they want to eat. Otherwise, they will starve.
wjk,
Think about the benefit. Minor inconveniences can be easily fixed.
I did say “outside Iran” BTW. The many people that left Iran after 1979 are likely to be more open to getting rid of Arabic letters.
I don’t know any Farsi, but I’m familiar with Arabic script; it only has three vowels, which you don’t write most of the time. This makes it very ambiguous for most other languages that have more vowels, and have real syllables, prefixes, and suffixes. This is why they got rid of it in Malaysia and Indonesia, and probably why they got rid of it in East Africa. Roman letters are just easier and more accurate for most people than Arabic even if they are not as nice looking. Switching to Roman characters does serve a purpose if Arabic characters make it much harder for people to become literate.
Re: Vi?ͺtnamese. Before it was romanized by Jesuit Monks in the 16th Century ? we’re not talking about recent adoption here ? Vi??tnamese was written in ‘fake’ Chinese characters, aka chu nom. Essentially Chinese characters prefixed with the ?? ??? radical. Thus chu nom is ????? ??????. And the litteracy rate, like in pre-Hangul Korea [ie pre-20th Century], was dismal. Because Vi?ͺtnamese has quite a few tones, the Latin alphabet has been supplemented with quite a bunch of squigglies that make it look like somebody sneezed punctuation all over the place, but it’s actually a system that works very well, and has been working for a few centuries. And while the study of chu nom is still alive, there is no will to go back to this system ? or invent a new one. Vi?ͺtnamese people may be nationalistic ? who isn’t? ? but they are also a pragmatic bunch… Why break something that works?
I am a US public school ESL teacher who has previously taught in Korea and China. Our Korean newcomers catch on to decoding (pronouncing a word in a text) quickly, and by the end of the year are at the top of the class in reading. I attribute this to Hangeul as its highly phonetic spelling with few exceptions and its syllable units, which teach children segmenting.
Hangeul is perfect for Korean, but that doesn’t mean it would work for other languages. It certainly wouldn’t work for English without serious revamping since beginning consonant blends like -str- in -string - cannot be represented accurately.