[Esol-news] Fw: [NIFL-ESL:7032] Re: back to hangul

[Pat Sawyer]

The following messages are for those of you who are interested in the origin
of languages.

----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Kirk <S.E.Kirk@durham.ac.uk>
To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov>
Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2002 12:17 PM
Subject: [NIFL-ESL:7032] Re: back to hangul


> Did people know that the consonants of the Korean alphabet were
> developed to represent the position of the tongue/lips in the
> pronunciation of those sounds? For anyone with knowlege of or access
> to hangul script, the symbols for 'n' and 'k' demonstrate this
> perfectly: the first depicting the rising of the front of the tongue
> to the alveolar ridge and the latter the rising of the back of the
> tongue to the velum.
>
> King Sejong was a fairly socialist king by all accounts and
> incorporating a certain degree of iconicity into an aleady ingenious
> system represents a stunning attempt to take literacy out of the hands
> of scholars and into the arms of the masses...
>
> ..and how magnificently successful his system proved (eventually!) to
> be.
>
> Steve Kirk,
> University of Durham,
> UK
> -------------------
> > Looking at the brahmic scripts used to write many S. Asian
> languages,
> > especially as they are used for Indic languages like Hindi, made me
> think:
> > wow these are syllabaries but very phonetically well specified,
> phonetic and
> > featural. So that is why I said I hadn't seen anything that complete
> since
> > hangul for Korean.  Well, read this exchange:
> >
> > http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/korean.txt
> >
> > >> As you probably know, both Korean and Katakana (Japanese)
> > >> scripts were invented by Buddhist monks to represent
> > >> Indian sounds better, hence both of them have some
> > >> relationship with Hindi (Devanagari) script.
> > >
> > >Sorry, but for Korean this is absolutely not the case (can't say
> for sure
> > >about katakana, but I find it unlikely).  Hangul, the Korean
> alphabet, was
> > >devised in 1443 by a group of scholars who were appointed by King
> Sejong
> > >to come up with an alphabetic system for recording the Korean
> language.
> > >Previously Koreans had used a very complex system known as "idu"
> which
> > >employed Chinese characters, and proved to be much too cumbersone.
> >
> > This account, frequently retold, is only partially accurate.
> >
> > The Korean alphabet was really invented by a Buddhist monk
> > Syol Chong, possibly around 1446. At that time, Buddhist literature
> > was widely read and Siddham and Tibetan scripts were widely
> > known to the Buddhist monks. Korean script is very phonetic, just
> > like Indian scripts. The shapes of the letters were however
> > independently invented, although some may seem to resemble
> > Devanagari.
> >
> > The Korean alphabet was revised in 1777-81.
> >
> > Why has the king been later attributed with inventing Hangul?
> > First, the invention occured when the state in Korea had been
> > opposed to Buddhism (and favoring Confucianism). Secondly
> > the credit for having Chinese script largely replaced by Hangul
> > goes to the Christian missionaries who found Hangul to be more
> > suitable. Korea today has a very large Christian population.
> >
> > ------
> >
> > Interesting to say the least.
> > Makes me realize how little I know.
> >
> > Charles Jannuzi
> >
> >
> >
> __________
>
> University of Durham Language Centre
>
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