SDLC 105 Learning Journal #6

[Hongzhen Chen]

Knowing the history of the language is no doubt very useful for my learning of Korean. While doing research on the Korean language history, I realized that although it has developed very differently from Chinese now, Chinese once had very deep impact on it in the history. In the ancient time when Koreans did nit have their hangul writing system, they used Chinese hanzi system and almost all the Korean literatures at that times were written in Chinese character. And although we have very different characters now, I can still find the Chinese origin in many Korean words pronunciations. Learning a language is  not only learning how to speak it, but also to know the history and culture behind the language. The reason why the hangul writing system is so important is that it contributed to one of the highest literacy rates in the world. And it is very impressive that the King in the 15th century was already thinking of the literacy rate and commissioned the invention of a more efficient and more accessible phonetic script to the common people.