![]() ![]() Hangul is considered to contain twenty eight “letters” in its original form four of the twenty-eight are now obsolete. Hangul was not a protracted and discrete adaptation of a borrowed system of writing, but rather a deliberate linguistically-sound invention. King Seycong, who ruled Korea in the mid 15th century, is traditionally credited with the creation of Hangul. ![]() ![]() The educated elite wrote in “hanja,” the Korean name for Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation. Before the 15th century Koreans had no writing system of their own. Linguist Geoffrey Sampson’s evaluation of Hangul is that “ it’s one of the great intellectual achievements of mankind.” Those experiences now have led me to delve into the writen language, Hangul (한글), the country’s native writing system with one of the youngest alphabets in the world. But since my trip to South Korea, I have extended the visit with a linguistic blessing of chance encounters, acquaintances, and even friends, all in the Washington,Dc area, where I live. It was natural that at first it was the spoken language that interested to me, in part because of the immediate need to communicate while traveling. As a spoken language, Korean belongs to the Altaic family within this family Korean is related to the Tungusic languages such as Manchu, more distantly to Mongolian, and more distantly to Turkish. I never expected to study Korean, but two years ago an unexpected trip with my boss to Seoul and Busan resulted in the Korean language becoming an ongoing passion for me. Why Korean Hangul (한글) is such an attractive written language ![]()
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