Has the writing system changed over time? Is there an alphabet? If yes, how many letters? What do they represent? Are there significant differences between manuscript and print? If there is no alphabet, what is the relationship between oral and written language? How does the system work?
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The Old Turkic alphabet is the earliest known Turkish alphabet. For many years, Turkish used form of the Arabic script during the Ottoman Empire, which was fitting because Turkish itself incorporates a lot of Arabic and Persian vocabulary. Ataturk, "Father of the Republic of Turkey" adopted the Latin alphabet in 1926, to the pleasure of many reformists who had been calling for the switch long before Ataturk's time.
Moving away from Arabic script was strongly opposed by conservative and religious advocates. They wanted to avoid being westernized and they felt that this was a huge step towards westernization. Others opposed the Latin alphabet because it would render virtually the entire country illiterate.
Now there are 29 letters in the Turkish alphabet that all represent sounds, some specific to only Turkish.
The modern Korean writing system, hangeul, was devised in 1443 during the reign of King Sejong. Before hangeul, other Korean scripts used a complex system of Chinese characters to represent the sounds of Korean. But because of the differences between Chinese and Korean, Chinese characters could not adequately denote Korean speech. Only the elite could afford the time necessary to study Chinese, so King Sejong commissioned the invention of a phonetic script both more efficient and more accessible to the common people.The Korean alphabet, Hangeul, consists of 24 letters (14 consonants and 10 vowels). Its three main vowels (ㆍ, ㅡ, ㅣ) represent the sky, the earth and man. The shapes of the consonants are based on the shape the mouth made when the corresponding sound is made (ㄱ is the shape of the tongue as it forms a ‘g’ sound (add a line, like so ㅋ, for an aspirated ‘g’, and double the letter , ㄲ, for one with a glottal stop). Now, most modern Korean literature and informal writing is written entirely in hangeul, however academic papers and official documents tend to be written in a mixture of hangeul and hanja.
Korean writing system has changed over time. Before 15th century, Korea used Chinese as their writing language. However, only the upper class was able to learn the writing and ordinary people cannot read and write. In order for the ordinary people to also be able to write, King Sejong the Great decided to create Korea's own language - Hangeul. They are made of alphabets with consonants and vowels. Words are made up of combining two or three alphabets. Therefore, people can speak the words when they see it by combing the sound of the alphabets. There is not much different in manuscript and print. The five basic Hangeul consonants are: ㄱ, ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅅ, and ㅇ, once one knows the five basic letters, the rest are more easily learned
In 1928, Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish republic and first president, changed the Turkish writing system from an Arabic-based system to one that was Latin-based. Atatürk's efforts was an attempt to bring the Turkish people closer to the Western way of life. Currently, the Turkish writing system is still Latin-based and places an emphasis on vowel harmony and agglutination. The importance of vowel harmony can be seen in the 29-letter Turkish alphabet. The alphabet has 8 vowels all indicating a unique sound: a,e, ı, i, o, ö, u, ü. Additionally, agglutination or the combination of suffixes onto the ends of words, are common in determining things like pronouns and plurality. The Turkish also has a few additional consonants that are not present in the American alphabet: ç, ğ, ş. Ç is similar to the Ch sound we make in English and ş is similar to the Sh sound we make in English while the ğ elongates the sound of the vowel coming before it in a word.
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Korean has the alphabet system that is similar to English called Hangul. It was created by King Sejong the Great. King Sejong is highly praised in Korea and even is featured on Korean currency. Hangul is known as one of the simplest writing systems that exist. There is only one letter per syllable, which makes it an efficient writing system. Prior to the creation of the Hangul, the Korean language was written in Chinese character called Hanja. After the creation of the Hangul, each word is constructed from vowels and consonants. Most of the words do not start with a vowel. It is important to know the syllable for each word too because you write the last consonant on the bottom of the vowel for each consonant of each word. The alphabet contains 14 consonant letters, 6 vowel letters, and 4 vowels. However, there are also double consonants, consonant clusters, and diphthongs. These additional letters are usually doubled up consonants or just an additional line added to the letter that changes the emphasis slightly.
Until 1928, Turkish was written with a version of the Perso-Arabic script known as the Ottoman Turkish script. In 1928, Turkey’s leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, issued a decree replacing the Arabic script with a version of the Latin alphabet, which has been used ever since. The reform of the script was an important step in the cultural reforms of the period. But also the Arabic script did not work well for the Turkish language, mainly because of the Turkish vowel system. Classical Arabic had three long and three short vowels, Turkish has eight. Specific vowels were all impossible to show in the Arabic alphabet without a special notation that did not exist. This caused Turks to not use their language correctly. With the modernization of the alphabet, and the support of educational systems and government, the literacy rates improved drastically throughout the country. Today, the Arabic script can only be seen on the historical buildings like palaces from the Ottoman era. The modern Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ğ, I, İ, Ö, Ş, and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requirements of the language. Of these 29 letters, eight are vowels (A, E, I, İ, O, Ö, U, Ü); the 21 others are consonants. I have found many of the letters to resemble to English alphabet and also sound very similar and intuitive.
The origin of Korean language came from a variety of different cultures, such as from China. Chinese culture was such a great influence, to the extent that some Korean individuals may still understand and recognize Chinese characters (known as Hanja) till this day. My grandmother and my father both have ancient Korean books that use these types of Chinese characters, which was really cool to observe! Since these were types of books, this represents Korean print culture. However, I have seen in Korean dramas that manuscripts can also be common, which differs because instead of printing the letters through a machine, the words in the manuscript are handwritten, one by one. This is very interesting to see that people took the time to individually write these types of letters and notes. I have been to culturally events that allowed you to sample this type of handwritten manuscripts and it was a really cool experience!
The Korean alphabet consists of 40 letters, when including vowels, consonants, and compounds. However, the basic Korean alphabet consists of just 14 consonants and 10 vowels, which can be very basic to learn. However, complications arise when putting the consonants and vowels together, especially with using double consonants and/or adding another consonant under the consonant + vowel word.
Atatürk changed the script firstly because the Arabic script did not work well for the Turkish language, mainly because of the Turkish vowel system. Classical Arabic had three long and three short vowels while Turkish has eight. Specific vowels were all impossible to show in the Arabic alphabet without a special notation that might have been developed, and it never even happened. There are 29 alphabets in Turkish that were derived from Latin alphabets. They represent different sounds and yumusak ge, which does not have a sound, makes the previous alphabet sounds longer. There are not that many of differences between manuscript and print but you have to be aware of writing l, i and shorter l on manuscript because they are confusing.
Korean alphabet compared with other languages is much easier to learn. It is made up of 14 consonants and 10 vowels, and the learner should know each sound of the character. Once the Korean learner knows how to pronounce the characters, he/she can pronounce each alphabet which is combined with at least two characters. However, there are still certain pronouncing rules we have to follow. Like when one word is connected with the other word, the pronunciation might be different. There are so many rules the learners should know and follow, but it is very hard to memorize. Thus, the best way to learn the correct pronunciation is to read more words with a native friend or by listening to the music. And there is no much difference between manuscript and print.
The writing system has changed a bit. In the ancient Korea, there was no characters at first. So people can only communicated by speaking. Long times later, there was an emperor called Sejong emperor sent some scholars to China to learn the Chinese characters system. After these scholars turned back to Korea they spread the Chinese characters to the society. The Sejong emperor also learned the Chinese system, so later he developed the whole Korean system as we learn today. So nowadays in Korea, some people still know some of the Chinese characters which called Hanja. And in many traveling places, Hanja can also be seen on a building (mostly temple) or some historical monuments.
The Portuguese writing system is very similar to that of the English, but is closer to that of Spanish. It includes many accents and also the carrot mark. Portuguese also uses the squiggly line that is similarly used over the n in Spanish. As far as creating words one can essentially sound the words except for a few letters. For example h in Portuguese sounds like aga or y sounds like ipsilion. However once one can get used to these two different sounding letters and get used to noticing where accents are one can easily spell in Portuguese.
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