SDLC 110 Cultural Post #4

[Jessica Crouser]

Hangul is the name of the Korean writing system and even though other Asian languages like Chinese and Japanese are character sets, Hangul is actually an alphabet. Even though it's not as complicated, in my opinion, as character sets, it has been an extra hurdle to learn the new alphabet before even beginning to learn vocabulary and grammar. The writing system was actually not too hard to learn, but some of the letters don't translate perfectly to English sounds, so it's still a challenge to try to make these new sounds, such as the sound in-between a "g" and a "k" or an "r" and an "l" in English. Also, there is a concept called the last consonant, which is that only a few sounds can be at the end of a word, so some words are spelled differently than they are pronounced, which creates words that may sound the same, but their distinction is in their spelling. Despite these few difficulties, the writing system is pretty straightforward. Each consonant has to be paired with a vowel and words are split up syllable-by-syllable. Obviously there are exceptions to rules in every writing system that just need to be memorized. However, when I thought about it, there are very minimal exceptions in Korean compared to English, and I couldn't imagine the difficulty of learning English and all its grammar exceptions this late in my life, so I appreciate Korean's relatively simply writing system. Also, the grammar is very simple because it's a contextual language, meaning most verbs aren't conjugated, so the subject is just implied. This makes it a lot easier to begin speaking sentences, not having to think about whether I'm talking in the first-, second-, or third-person.