| ▲ | kijin a day ago |
| For those wondering why OP linked to the first part of the history page instead of the main page, the history is indeed one of the distinguishing features of Hangul. It's one of the few writing systems currently in use that was deliberately designed, instead of occurring naturally over time. This means that any similarities and relationships between symbols that you might find are probably intended, not accidental. Noticing these similarities is key to quickly learning Hangul, as it greatly reduces the number of distinct patterns you need to memorize. It's also fun for programmers who like puzzles. :) |
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| ▲ | senkora a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| > This means that any similarities and relationships between symbols that you might find are probably intended Specifically, the symbols reflect phonological features like place-of-articulation. In general, such a writing system is called featural: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Featural_writing_system |
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| ▲ | rachofsunshine 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There are a few other writing systems that were deliberately created. My favorite is the Cherokee syllabary [1]. A Cherokee man named Sequoyah ended up serving as a soldier in one of the early conflicts between English settlers and other Native American groups. In this case, his people were on the side of English settlers against rival tribes (see [2]), so he was serving alongside English soldiers in the conflict. He saw them reading and writing - something he couldn't do, since the Cherokee language had no written script at the time - and went "wait this seems like it would be pretty useful". So Sequoyah, who until this point had never encountered a writing system, decides he's going to make one. He starts by trying to create a symbol for every word, but decides that's too difficult, so he switches to symbols for syllables instead. It took him ten years to finish it, but once he did, it was adopted by nearly every speaker of Cherokee within only a few years. It's still the primary writing system for the Cherokee language today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_syllabary [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creek_War |
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| ▲ | kijin 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | IMO Tolkien's Tengwar is the closest to Hangul. The shapes of the consonants represent the place and manner of articulation, such that similar sounds look similar on paper. Vowels are written as diacritics above the consonants, with the result that each complete letter represents a syllable. There are other syllabaries, both naturally occurring and deliberately created, but most of them don't show subpatterns that represent the sounds that make up each syllable. Cherokee looks a lot like the Japanese kana. Which is not surprising, because both are syllabaries designed to overcome the difficulty of a fully ideographic writing system (kanji in the case of Japanese). |
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| ▲ | corimaith 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Kind of amazing too that it was personally created by King Sejong himself. Even today there aren't many people who can do such thing, let alone a monarch whose handd would have been filled by other duties. |
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| ▲ | hyeonwho4 16 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There are ... speculations that King Sejong was not fully independent in the creation of Hangeul. He may have delegated parts of the task to courtly scholars. (But all the evidence either way has been lost to history, and so speculation it remains.) There are a few "historical" dramas which make this their premise. | | |
| ▲ | kijin 15 hours ago | parent [-] | | In many ancient and medieval monarchies, any major project that occurred with the king's approval was attributed to the king personally, regardless of his level of participation. Kings built plenty of castles, but they probably didn't move a single stone with their own hands. The academic consensus seems to be that Sejong had a lot of personal involvement in the creation of Hangul, though. He was a quintessential nerd, after all, who didn't have much patience with the conservative officials who got in the way of his nerdy projects. |
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| ▲ | labster 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Admittedly most of my impressions are from watching K-dramas but I get the impression that the monarch is somewhat superfluous in bureaucracy-heavy systems like in Joseon and China — and that the government was generally happiest when the kings did nothing. All they have is free time and education. Plus you should look at Hangul as a political action. Educating the commoners creates a bourgeoisie class that can be the king’s allies against the noble and bureaucratic classes. People who can read laws and write complaints are less subject to the whims of corrupt local officials. |
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