Fourth Cultural Post: Target Language's Writing System
The Korean writing system is called Hangul, an alphabet created in 1443 by King Sejong of the Joseon Dynasty. The name ‘Hangul’ literally means ‘great’ (han) ‘script’ (geul). This writing system was created to replace the usage of Chinese characters, known as Hanja in Korean, with a simpler system that any person could easily learn and then become literate. Despite the invention of this stream lined writing system, Kanja was still commonly used even during the 1990s.
The alphabet consists of 19 consonants and 21 vowels, some of which are simple and other which are more complex but based off of the simple letters. The simple letters are designed to mimic the shape the mouth makes to make the sound of the letter. Interestingly, some letters are pronounced in a similar way to others, if not exactly the same way. This is due to an evolution in pronunciation which softened the difference in sound between some letters. Despite their redundancy in sound, these letters are kept for the sake of spelling and differentiating between words. There are a few more letters that used to exist, but are archaic and are no longer included in the modern writing system.
Each letter is built from tree basic strokes: — (representative of the earth), | (of a human), and ∙ (of the sun). Once an individual letter is made, it is then grouped into a sound block with other letters, and these blocks are then combined with other ones to form words. Each of these units has at least one vowel and one consonant, since neither can stand alone.
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