Hangeul Day holiday again

by thekorean on November 8, 2012

in South Korea

Good news for everyone in Korea: October 9, the “Hangeul Day”, is re-designated as a holiday beginning next year.

{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }

1 CactusMcHarris November 8, 2012 at 2:24 am: When did they take it away?

I’d have at least worn a headband and chopped a jade plant in half in front of City Hall in protest had I known it was withdrawn, but thankfully I don’t have to now.

It’s a red-letter day, eh?
2 thekorean November 8, 2012 at 2:30 am: They took it away in 1991, along with the Military Day (Oct. 1). It was devastating to me as a school child — two red-letter days in October, gone in a wink.
3 DLBarch November 8, 2012 at 3:00 am: As someone who came to Korean from Japanese, and who, truth be told, dicked around in Seoul for almost three years before really bothering to learn the language past the taxi and restaurant level Korean I was then more than satisfied to rely on, I for one am a huge fan of hangeul.

(Whew! How’s that for a run-on sentence?!)

Anyway, I, too, did not know that it had stopped being a national holiday. And, hey, it’s not everyday that one notices the 행안부 in the news, so those guys must be enjoying their moment.

DLB
4 slim November 8, 2012 at 3:11 am: I’ve heard that Hangeul Day is the world’s most scientific holiday.
5 dogbertt November 8, 2012 at 3:51 am: I hear the distant sound of elephants trumpeting in jubilation.
6 kuiwon November 8, 2012 at 4:47 am: Good news? This is a time for lamentation. For anyone that believes in the myths surrounding Hangul (e.g., that it is “scientific”), read Gari Ledyard’s works, which are summarized here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_hangul#Ledyard.27s_theory_of_consonant_letters
7 gbevers November 8, 2012 at 4:54 am: I love to look for grammar mistakes in these kinds of articles. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any in the posted article.
8 Adams-awry November 8, 2012 at 5:02 am: You’re not looking hard enough, freak.
9 Anonymous_Joe November 8, 2012 at 5:55 am: #4: props, slim :clap:
10 gbnhj November 8, 2012 at 8:37 am: The Hanguel Day or no the Hanguel Day, holidays like these fuck with my work schedule. I hope they move this culturally but non-historically significant holiday to Mondays. If they do, it’ll be a lot easier to work with, and the three-day weekend will be more useful too.
11 brier November 8, 2012 at 9:43 am: Excellent news. Do 2013 calendars have time for a reprinting?
12 jkitchstk November 8, 2012 at 10:47 am: Are there any other countries that nationalize its language and/or make it a paid holiday?
13 fanwarrior November 8, 2012 at 11:01 am: #12, apparently you’ve never met the French.
14 fanwarrior November 8, 2012 at 11:07 am: #6, yes do give that a good read:
” Nothing would disturb me more, after this study is published, than to discover in a work on the history of writing a statement like the following: “According to recent investigations, the Korean alphabet was derived from the Mongol ‘phags-pa script” [...] ‘phags-pa contributed none of the things that make this script perhaps the most remarkable in the world.”
15 Wedge November 8, 2012 at 11:08 am: With gbnhj on this. There are already enough holidays in this country and if they don’t make it a Monday or a Friday then it’s not productive.
16 Arghaeri November 8, 2012 at 12:17 pm: Only at first glance, when you consider how many fall on a weekend!
17 kuiwon November 8, 2012 at 12:18 pm: #14 – I have read that book. Although I would give the Phags-pa alphabet more credit than he would, read the sentences right before that: “The origin of the Korean alphabet is, in fact, not a simple matter at all. Those who say it is “based” in ‘phags-pa are partly right; those who say it is “based” on abstract drawings of articulatory organs are partly right.”

Those, who promote Hangul-pride (nay, fanaticism) and Hangul-exclusivism, paint too simple of a picture.
18 Q November 8, 2012 at 1:35 pm: kiwon,

Have you tried sending text messages in Chinese or Japanese languages? I do not support the idea of Hangeul exclusivism, but I think it is true that Hangeul is very efficiant and economical alphabetical system.
19 pawikirogii 石鵝 November 8, 2012 at 1:55 pm: 한글 is just fine for korea. no need for 한문 anymore.
20 gbevers November 8, 2012 at 2:59 pm: Pawi wrote (#19):

한글 is just fine for korea. no need for 한문 anymore.

Too bad because 한문 can be poetic, even something as simple as this:

아경인친
인경아친
아경인형
인경아형

Quite poetic, isn’t it, Pawi? Even though you don’t know the meaning.
21 sanshinseon November 8, 2012 at 3:03 pm: It’s a good start. Indeed, Han-geul Day ought to be set as the second Friday or third Monday of October. And then, Gaecheon-jeol advanced about two weeks forward from where it is (doesn’t matter, because the original 10.03 was a lunar date), and Military Respecting Day revived somewhere along with them — actually then, an entire week in the middle of October should be made a collective holiday, “Danpung Week”, with visits to the great mountains highly encouraged. This would be of great benefit to the tourism and leisure industries, and to the general welfare of all this nation’s residents (except for the resulting traffic-jams). Chuseok could even be blended in to this, make it the 9th Full Moon (instead of 8th) and make sure that this Danpung Holiday Week always includes he 9th Full Moon. When I’m elected President of Korea, that’s what I’ll do first-off….
22 pawikirogii 石鵝 November 8, 2012 at 3:16 pm: gerry, i like the chinese derived word pronounced ‘호우’. too bad you already know the meaning.
23 gbevers November 8, 2012 at 3:22 pm: Pawi wrote (#22):

gerry, i like the chinese derived word pronounced ‘호우’. too bad you already know the meaning.

You are confused, Pawi. I’m not your “good friend.”
24 gbevers November 8, 2012 at 4:18 pm: By the way, Pawi, concerning your Time Magazine cover, I have noticed that Korean man seem to like 겨자김치 much more than I did.
25 fanwarrior November 8, 2012 at 6:05 pm: #17 To be honest, I don’t really find the evidence presented in the wikipedia article that compelling.
While some of the shapes bare a vague resemblance some of them are quite a stretch.
26 Stereo November 9, 2012 at 12:38 am: Q November 8, 2012 at 1:35 pm #18
>I think it is true that Hangeul is very efficiant and economical alphabetical system.

Hangeul is the least efficient phonogram on earth.
How many hanguel letters are there?
19 consonants * 21 vowels * 28 patchim or no patchim =11,172 letters.
Hangeul needs 11,172 letters to express what Roman alphabets can express with just 26 letters. That is 429 times inefficient. This inefficiency causes a lot of trouble to human being. Look at this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Multilingual_Plane

This is a map of basic multilingual plane that enables computers to show letters of world languages. Of the 65,536 letters available on the basic multilingual plane, hanguel consumes as much as 11,264 which is more than the number of all phonograms of all world languages except Korean combined. If Korean had not used this least efficient phonogram on earth, more symbols and marks would have been available on computers. What is more embarrassing is that, of the 11,172 letters, only about 4,000 are actually used. The rest are just theoretical combinations which never show up in any dictionary. What a waste. What is more outrageous is that some Koreans even promote what they call “extended hanguel” with will just explode the number of letters into hundreds of thousands.

It is not only inefficient but is imperfect as a phonogram. One cannot know the reading in some cases. Flower petal “kkoch iph” is pronounced “kkon nip”. Dentist “chi kwa” is pronounced “chi kkwa”. Where did the extra k come from?
27 gbevers November 9, 2012 at 1:15 am: Stereo wrote:

Hangeul is the least efficient phonogram on earth.
How many hanguel letters are there?
19 consonants * 21 vowels * 28 patchim or no patchim =11,172 letters.
Hangeul needs 11,172 letters to express what Roman alphabets can express with just 26 letters. That is 429 times inefficient. This inefficiency causes a lot of trouble to human being.

By multiplying the consonants, vowels, and patchim combinations you mentioned, you get 11,172 “syllable” combinations, not letters. That means the Korean language could possibly have 11,174 distinct 1-syllable words, which suggests to me that their writing system is very efficient.

How many 1-syllable words can be made with the English alphabet?

Also, anyone who has studied the Korean language knows that learning hangeul is the easiest part of the language. Someone can learn to read a Korean in a couple of days, even though they won’t know what they are reading.

Korean is one of the hardest languages on earth to learn, but it is one of the easiest to write.
28 gbevers November 9, 2012 at 1:17 am: CORRECTION: “Someone can learn to read a Korean book in a couple of days ….”
29 Arghaeri November 9, 2012 at 8:13 am: kkon nip”. Dentist “chi kwa” is pronounced “chi kkwa”. Where did the extra k come from?

Hmm, you write in english but have never read it, if you think examples you gave are so
ething to single out lorean for.

and as Gerry notes you don’t even know what a letter is!
30 fanwarrior November 9, 2012 at 9:39 am: #26, seriously..that’s some grade A stupidity right there.
The letters are the individual letters. What you’re talking about are Jamos, and there are not even that many. Not all are actually used.

Jamos cause no difficulty because unlike Chinese symbols they don’t need to be memorized. They can be read at a basic level. You seem to have a completely flawed understanding of how anything works, so there really isn’t anything else relevant here in what you’ve said.
31 kuiwon November 9, 2012 at 9:39 pm: #18 Hangul with current technology is easier to input, primarily because it has roughly the same amount of letters as the Roman alphabet. However, imagine what it was like to use a printing press more than a century ago. Hangul was just as complicated as Chinese or Japanese to print, as you needed a block for each Hangul block (e.g., 가, 갸, 거, 겨). It has already been said above that there are 10,000+ Hangul syllable combinations. The most common 5000 Chinese characters occur about 95+% of the time. Also, it is conceivable in the future that Chinese and Japanese become just as easy to input just as Hangul.

#19 That is now a minority opinion. Anyone who has read Korean outside the K-pop lyrics realizes that Korean is a very difficult language without some grasp of Hanmun. http://www.segye.com/Articles/ISSUE/ISSUES/Article.asp?aid=20110630004849&sid=4000169&subctg1=&subctg2=

#25 Well if you had believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and does not move your entire life and then someone on Marmot’s hole tried to convince you that it moves, you would find a wiki article unconvincing, based on your own previous prejudices.

#30 Based on that argument, we would be better off using Morse code. With only two symbols, there’s a lot less to memorize than Hangul.