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Hah. I finally found something suitable to post in General Chat.
This is from yesterday's GC, from discussions that BB and I were having under the "ramen" theme, but reposting here in case current gen chat folks might be interested...
On the Korean writing system....
Hanguel was created, actually designed, by a 'think tank" of scholars in the 1400s in Korea, under the rule of King Se-jeong. Se-jeong is credited as the originator and creator, although I'm unsure if he had any direct input.
Until that time, Korean language did not have its own writing form. Due to its vassal relationship being in the orbit of Ancient China, like Japan and other satellite peoples, the Koreans adopted hancha - Chinese characters - for writing and recording things.
So up until the 1400's, all official stuff was written in "han-mun", Han meaning Chinese and mun 文 meaning letters or text. Similar to but different from Japan, Korean aristocracy were the only literate people in the nation.
In Japan, the Samurai formed the nexus of the aristocracy, with samurai being first and foremost warriors and secondly - in some cases - scholars. In Korea, the aristocracy were first and foremost scholars, with some - professional military - being the warriors.
The similarities and contrasts play to some extent. In Korea, it was academic brilliance that led the way, in Japan, martial brilliance. In Korea, ethical virtue being the aspired to highest values, in Japan, martial virtue.
Anyway, until the 1400s, writing involved using either a pure Chinese system or or another modified version tha fused Chinese letters with Korean language, by adopting the sound of the Chinese characters to represent the sounds used in the Korean language.
(In kanji, you'll notice that there are two types of pronunciation: on-yomi and kun-yomi. On yomi, literally 'sound reading', are derived from the original Chinese pronunciation, somewhat Japanified. Kun-yomi, literally "meaning reading" are native Japanese pronunciations.
This is why the on-yomi for 水 in Japanese is sui, in Korean "soo" and in Chinese (Mandarin) 'shui'.
Which came first, the Chinese or the Japanese? Japanese existed as a language prior to the importation of Chinese, and when they adopted kanji into Japanese systems of writing, they kept the character but assigned the native Japanese pronunciation, or rather, they adopted the Chinese character to represent the original Japanese. Thus, みず. [mizu] is native Japanese. [sui] is derived from the Chinese word with the Chinese pronunciation.)
Anyway, when King Se-jeong came to the throne, he thought it wasn't great that the general population had no writing system they could use. Chinese characters were used by the aristocracy in either original Chinese form (aka Chinese grammar, lexicons, syntax, etc) or in a hybrid where Chinese was used to represent the Korean sounds.
This would be like finding two Chinese characters for the sound 'mi' and 'zu' (eg 美 + 頭) to write 'mizu' in Japanese.
Se-jeong put his scholars to work, and they developed hangeul based on the principles I mentioned.Here, han' means Korean (same sound but completely different Chinese character than the Chinese 'han'), and geul means 'writing'.
It was promulgated to the nation via a book he published in 1446 called "hun min cheong eum" roughly "Correct sounds for educating the people". Se-Jeong wanted the alphabet to be something the regular folks could all learn and use, instead of the extremely complicated Chinese writing system with its tens of thousands of characters.
Consonants
The consonant shapes were derived from and formulated as graphic representations of the locus of articulation: ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㄱ represent sounds close to the English n, l, m, p, s, k.
ㄴ is like the shape of the tongue as it presses against the alveolar ridge when one pronounces 'n', ㄹ is like the more rolled up shape when we pronounce an ' l ', ㅁ is like the shape of the mouth (aka a box or hole enclosed on all sides) when we say "m", ㅂ is like the mouth as in m, but with two little pips coming up representing the air being released in the explosive labial "p", ㅅ represents the shape the tongue when pressed up allowing air through to form the sibilant "s", ㄱ represents the back of the throat where K (or g) are pronounced.
Korean Linguistics in the 15th century was light-years ahead of anything that Europe had at the same time, and I think was probably the pinnacle of linguistic thought / science at the time (although I'm pretty much ignorant of those Indians, who I think were pretty darn advanced too)
Vowels
Korean vowels were constructed along neo-confucianist principles, the basis of which is the trinity of: Heaven (天) - Human (人) - Earth (地). In Neo-Confucianism, the cosmos consists of essentially three elements: Heaven (the world of spirit), Earth (the material world) and humans, who dwell between both of these and who are formed of elements from both.
The Korean scholars used a vertical line to represent heaven (which is yang), a horizontal line to represent earth (which is yin), and a dot to represent humanity. The dot changed later on (was written later on) as a short 'dash'. Thus, the Korean letter ㅏ("ah") is a combination of the vertical line for heaven plus the dot or dash representing humanity. A diphthong version "yah" is represented by the extra dashㅑ. ㅜ "oo" is the horizontal line for Earth plus the dot (dash) underneath for humanity. The diphthong version has two dashes namely ㅠ.
In Korean linguistics all vowels are either yang 陽 (masculine) or yin 陰 (feminine). Eg "ah" is a masculine or yang sound, while eo (short 'o' with lips unrounded) is a feminine or yin sound.
Consonant / vowel clusters
Korean is written then by combining consonants and vowels into a syllabic cluster. 한 is a combination of ㅎ 'h' sound + ㅏ "ah' sound + ㄴ "n" sound, to form the word or syllable "han".
Thus, Korean is both individualized phonetic sound script like English AND a syllabic representation system like Japanese. The clusters bring together Heaven, Earth and Humanity, plus consonants and vowels.
(If a word or syllable only has a vowel, a silent consonant place hold is inserted. ㅇ is usually pronounced "ng" but if the word/syllable is "ah" for example, it is written 아 and the ㅇ is silent.)
https://somahan.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Hangul-1447.jpg
It can be written vertically or horizontally, although generally horizontal is preferred these days.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Korean_text_test.svg/1280px-Korean_text_test.svg.png
So while hangul was not designed by mathematics, it is highly, highly systematic (unlike, for example, hiragana which are basically simply highly stylized versions of a chinese character that once represented the sound. eg. 安 'an' became あ. Not to put down hiragana, rather, only to highlight the amazingly systematic way that the Korean writing system was developed.
The above only scratches the absolute awesomeness that is the Korean writing system, imo. But I'm biased. :P
Thus, whereas many writing systems were developed haphazardly using random or somewhat unrelated symbols to represent sounds, Hangul was developed based on very clear linguistic correlations plus philosophical conceptualization of the nature of universe.
Cool, right?
That is interesting. I've heard that hangul is a better writing system than what Japan has. I'm a Japanfag myself and the katakana pronunciation is rather phonetically limited. It's all syllables, with either a lone vowel sound or a consonant paired with a vowel. The only consonant that stands on its own is "N" (ん). So credit card becomes "kurejitto kaado" and inexplicably, Japanese raise their voice in the middle as if they are reciting poetry when saying it. Bizarre.
For a while, my daughter was interested in Korea. She liked Twice, but has since realized that K-Pop is a bunch of phony crap, as well as J-Pop. (She calls BTS "LGBTS" because she can't stand the girly men.) But back when she was interested, I bought her a book on reading hangul at Book Off. She picked it up rather quickly and can maybe still read it a bit, but she doesn't understand the language at all.
That's very cool. The characters in the graphics above have a new 'energy' to me than previously with the perspective/info you shared. Good read. Ko maps mne da for the post.