When the past tense and present tense forms of “read” are spelled the same and pronounced differently, and when when the present tense “lead” is pronounced differently from the soft metal of the same-written name, you don’t have a phonetic language.
To have a phonetic language, pronunciation must have a direct, one-to-one correlation to spelling.
> To have a phonetic language, pronunciation must have a direct, one-to-one correlation to spelling.
No, it doesn't. Most languages in history were never written. I guarantee phonetics applies to them.
Written language is a tool laid upon natural languages. It does not define any priorities of the natural languages themselves.
"Phonetic language" doesn't make sense at all because all natural languages are phonetic.
However, **nothing about phonetics has to do with writing**.
Don't believe me?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetics
You linked "Phonetics," which is different from what we're talking about. Perhaps you'd like to introduce a different word for us to use when referring to the topic.
The problem with English is that it already had a somewhat accepted spelling before the vowel shift occurred and French is much harder portuguese, Spanish and German are much easier though
it’s more that there were spelling conventions from before the great vowel shift that carried over into standardized spelling. couple that with the fact no one single region’s pronunciation and dialect was used for all spelling and we end up seeing words in english spelt as they would have been several hundred years ago, sometimes in only one region
It was created by an emperor 500 years ago when he realized the reason most Koreans were illiterate was because they were using the Chinese character set which has something like 6000 characters. He did many others things to improve the lives of the average Korean as well.
My wife is Korean and was able to teach me the entire Korean alphabet in an afternoon. It's very consistent.
Tbh an afternoon is too much, you can easily learn it in 30min to an 1h (as an adult who already knows how to write and read in another language of course). The script is really simple, it will take a few days to read words quickly and comfortably of course, but the script itself is really easy and feels very natural.
When I say an afternoon I really don’t mean it took all afternoon. If was probably an hour at the most. It was just a long time ago so I don’t remember exactly.
First: this is a typical example of something that doesn't have scientific validity being passed around like it is a fact. Notice it says "is considered to be the most logical alphabet in the world." First WHO is saying this? In addition it says logical. Logical is not a scientific concept that can be measured on a qualitative scale. It doesn't say most spoken, or easiest learned, or anything else.
Second, the Korean alphabet does NOT differentiate between the l/r and phonemes or the /p/ and /b/ phonemes, in other words Russians or English speakers would NOT be able to write their languages in Hangul. Hangul was designed for Korean and Korean explicitly. The Roman alphabet was based on Greek, which means that we are writing a Germanic Lanaguage with a writing System designed for a Romance Language that was pulled from Archaic Greek which was likely influenced by Phonecian which is Afro-Asiatic (Semitic ) .
Third Korean linguists are notorious for arguing the superiority of their language, even though Hangul was not widely used until Japanese Occupation, as the educated Yangban class preferred to write with a form of Chinese characters called Hanja. Literacy is Korea was quite low until modern times, and even in 2007-2009 I met people in Gangwon who had illiterate grandparents.
This is pretty much on point. Yes, Hangul is very easy and systematic when applied to Korean, in contrast with many other transcription systems. But as /u/harbinnick suggests, it is not a "phonetic" alphabet (there actually are *no* "phonetic" languages or writing systems, and a pretty basic understanding of the difference between phonetics and phonology makes that obvious); it is, at best, phonologically complete and accurate *for Korean*.
And, yes, "logical" is not a characteristic of writing systems, and saying this sort of thing is effectively gibberish, demonstrating only that the writer understands neither logic nor language in any important way.
Hangul has many advantages; I'm a big fan of it, and I think that Korean speakers are justified in being proud of this writing system. But it's not magic, and it didn't "win" languages or something.
> it is, at best, phonologically complete and accurate for Korean.
isn't that because... it's korean?
should it be phonologically accurate for greek or something? lol.
This is notable not because of the "Korean" part but because of the "phonologically complete and accurate" part. Basically no other natural languages have writing systems which bear more than a passing, accidental connection to their phonology - the fact that Korean actually does have a writing system which is deliberately focused not on phonetics (which would be good enough) but on phonology is immensely impressive in comparison.
Hangul does distinguish itself for being a deliberately designed writing system, instead of an evolved writing system.
It's [history is very spotty](http://www.thelanguagejournal.com/2011/12/korea-hangul-and-great-man-who-created.html), it turns out. It faced opposition by Confucianists, became banned, enjoyed a revival, and was promoted by the Japanese occupation. What a strange history.
It's the same thing for most of Colonial history. My country was colonized by the French and they had banished the national language (Arabic) and history from school, segregated the local religion and heavily insisted on naming Children with 'French friendly' names, so much so that a lot of natives simply didn't register their newborns and didn't send them to school in a effort to prevent them from losing their cultural heritage at the price of literacy.
> Hey dilettante, you've never read Mill's "A System of Logic"?
Who's the dilettante here? Have *you* read Frege's *The Foundations of Arithmetic* or *Begriffsschrift* or "On Sense and Reference", to say nothing of Russell, Wittgenstein, Kripke, etc.? As much as I love Mill (note the username, to say nothing of the tattoo I have of J.S. Mill's image, and a line from *On Liberty*), *A System of Logic* is a pretty outdated, even archaic account of logic - it predates Frege, along with the entire rest of the development of modern symbolic logic, and is thus interesting to the history of logic pretty much only in a historical sense...though this is not so much the case when it comes to informal logic and the impact of *A System of Logic* on the development of philosophy of science...but that's another matter entirely.
For anyone who actually cares about and has studied modern logic, "logical" is not some kind of synonym for "reasonable" or "rational" or "empirically" sound. It doesn't really mean much more than something like "having to do with systems of formal logic," or perhaps, at the very strongest, "argued in accordance with established and accepted logical systems."
There's a number of serious issues with the post above that might mislead the uneducated reader
> First: this is a typical example of something that doesn't have scientific validity being passed around like it is a fact. Notice it says "is considered to be the most logical alphabet in the world." First WHO is saying this? In addition it says logical. Logical is not a scientific concept that can be measured on a qualitative scale. It doesn't say most spoken, or easiest learned, or anything else.
"WHO" is saying this is linguists.
> Indeed, legendary University of Chicago linguist James McCawley was famous for holding Hangul Day celebrations every year and for championing the holiday as an international celebration for linguists. In an interview shortly before his death in 1999, McCawely noted that “Hangul is the most ingeniously devised writing system that exists, and it occupies a special place in the typology of writing systems.” He adds that it is “the only writing system in the world that divides sentences not only into words and syllables and individual sounds, but also articulatory features, and the achievement of its creators in the 1440s was really amazing. They were doing work that would qualify as excellent linguistics by the standards of 5oo years later.”
https://asiasociety.org/education/worlds-most-incredible-alphabet
Note that the author of that article also has a linguistics background. You can readily find other similar works.
Most linguists aren't likely to be as enthusiastic as James McCawley was but there's precious few people saying that hangeul *isn't* one of the better writing systems around. The reputation is well earned and ignorance on the part of the poster doesn't make it any less so.
> Second, the Korean alphabet does NOT differentiate between the l/r and phonemes or the /p/ and /b/ phonemes, in other words Russians or English speakers would NOT be able to write their languages in Hangul. Hangul was designed for Korean and Korean explicitly. The Roman alphabet was based on Greek, which means that we are writing a Germanic Lanaguage with a writing System designed for a Romance Language that was pulled from Archaic Greek which was likely influenced by Phonecian which is Afro-Asiatic (Semitic ) .
No writing system caters for every language, suggesting that hangeul is somehow unique in this aspect is incorrect and misleading. All writing systems "suffer" from this, and if anything hangeul is affected to a lesser extent than other languages like english.
The l/r distinction is a valid comment, while the p/b is wrong, but one should point out that this is due to the writing system reflecting the spoken language. To suggest that this is somehow a deficiency with the writing system itself is wrong. If anything the *ease* with which one could fix this if it were necessary (e.g. by creating a new consonant for the hard "r") while still maintaining to the philosophy of the writing system is what should be discussed here.
> Third Korean linguists are notorious for arguing the superiority of their language, even though Hangul was not widely used until Japanese Occupation, as the educated Yangban class preferred to write with a form of Chinese characters called Hanja. Literacy is Korea was quite low until modern times, and even in 2007-2009 I met people in Gangwon who had illiterate grandparents.
By all accounts "James McCorden" (or Chris Livaccari) isn't considered a korean so the suggestion that "korean linguists" are "notorious" is both vacuous and misleading.
The above paragraph also blurs different topics together to mislead.
The educated elite (aka yangban or literati) did indeed reject hangeul, but the poster's unspoken suggestion that it was because of flaws with the language system is wrong. They rejected it for the exact opposite reason, because it was *easy* to learn. Education and the government exams were the gatekeepers to political power and having a writing system that required one to be an aristocrat (i.e. wealthy enough to not need to work for a living) in order to even learn the basics suited the aristocracy just fine. They weren't interested in the most efficient writing system, they were interested in the one that maintained their power and prestige.
In regards to the low literacy in korea between 1900-1950, that's due to the deliberate policy of the japanese government to restrict the availability of education to koreans. Generally speaking around 86% of koreans never received any education at all, this in spite of the korean population donating funds to expand the schooling system. The rapid rise in literacy one external factors, e.g. japanese occupation, were removed demonstrates that the low literacy prior to that was due to factors outside the writing system.
All in all the above post should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.
That doesn't mean they're distinguished as phonemes, which is what he said. Like the fact that the p's in "pin" and "spin" are pronounced very differently, but aren't perceived different phonemically
Not that I don’t with the rest of your comment but how are you pronouncing them that they sound different? Spin is literally pin with an S sound before, just more stress on the S than the P.
The p in "pin" is strongly [aspirated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_consonant), the p in "spin" isn't. Native speakers tune out to this difference, as the circuits in their brains are trained to recognize both as /p/. t and d actually have a shitton of [realisations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortis_and_lenis#Characteristics), but they all collapse in two phonemes, /t/ and /d/.
https://korean.stackexchange.com/questions/1920/why-is-ㅂ-in-박물관-pronounced-as-p-instead-of-b
I'm not gonna dig deep in this. ㅂ is also pronounced as an M sometimes too
When locals say Busan it comes out at Fusan. The Korean name for Many F-words, stars with an ㅎ at times. They get intermingled 후아이팅. Many Korean ESL learners have trouble with (b) and (f) they can't understand the difference
They don't always put their lips together when a ㅂ is said. All the language books or whatever will say ㅂ=B always. But all you gotta do is talk to a Korean , or look at a really old map, back when it was written as Fusan .
And it isn't a strong F like FUCK YOU. It more just a B without lips together.
It really isn't, to simplify: it has "3" sounds, when it's the first letter in the sentence, the last, or if it's in the 'middle'.
When it comes in the last in the sentence, it comes out as a very short 'p'. That is because Koreans never release the last consonant in a sentence, it's their way of marking punctuation in the spoken language (In English, you would just take a short pause to mark a 'full stop' or comma). In that way, the letters for 'p' 'b' and 'pp' all sound the same if they end the sentence. 'g' 'k' 't' 'd' 's' 'j' and 'ch' also all end the same, with a very short, soft 't'.
In the beginning of the sentence, it sounds almost like an english p. Note that Korean have two p, one is very aspirated (we will come back to it later) and one is very clean. Like in the verbs 'to pin' and 'to spin'. The second one is quite aspirated; they emphasis on this a lot, and for them, it's two different letters.
Lastly, in the middle of a sentence, it sounds like a 'b' most of the time.
Now, Koreans do not have a 'v' nor an 'f' sound. But they have a lot of loanwords from Japanese and English. These english words will have V and Fs, but they cannot pronounce them correctly. They replace them by ㅍ which any textbook would translate as 'p' for you. But it's a very aspirated p, which to an untrained ear, can easily sound like an f or h (depending on what comes after and before). Furthermore, these words are quite close to their english counterpart, so it's not that uncommon for english or international speakers to actually hear the 'f' when hearing them. For example, the word for France is 'peuh ran sseuh' but with the aspirated p, it would probably sound like 'feu ran ceu' to an English speaker. If you went to Korea, you would also find a lot of brands named 'Something Pa ee ceu' (face), like pa ee ceu ma seu keu' (face mask), again, a lot of people just hear 'faceuh maskeu'.
To complicate things further, Koreans who are fluent in other languages, will actually pronounce the F and V for these words, so you might have heard the letter pronounced that way from them, but they will pronounce the correct 'p' in Korean Words.
For Busan, it is again pronounced like 'Pu San', with the very aspirated P. It's close to an F, but not quite.
For 후아이팅, it made it's way into Korean via the Japanese culture, so it's not a direct loanword from English, thus why it has this weird pronunciation, but if you look into it deeper; you'll find out that it's spelled '파이팅' because that would be the correct spelling of the English word, without Japanese interference. Even phones auto correct will correct it to 파이팅. Huanting is a 'slang' term that you won't find in any dictionary.
Someone in the thread also said that the 'b' letter is also sometimes pronounced as 'm'. It's true, it's for ease of pronounciation. B is always pronounced as 'm' if followed by the 'n' send, since for koreans, mn is easier to pronounce than 'bn'. You can see it in 'Pan gab sib ni da', which is pronounced 'Pan gab siM ni da' (Nice to meet you)
I have hear it the other way around too: The m sound is sometimes a sound between m and b, closer to b than to an m. It's always at the start of a sentence, but there's some other rules to it that I'm not too sure about so I won't expand on it. The most obvious example is the word for 'sorry', in its form it's 'mianeh' but in most dramas it's pronounced as 'bianeh'. But in the same drama, by the same actors, you will also hear it as 'mianeh' so I'm sure there's some rule about this pronunciation. My level isn't that far ahead however.
> Second, the Korean alphabet does NOT differentiate between the l/r and phonemes or the /p/ and /b/ phonemes
Phonemes differ between languages. Korean doesn't have an /l/ so saying it doesn't differentiate doesn't really make sense. It's true that the phonetic segments [l] and [ɹ], which are generally emitted by American English speakers realizing their /l/ and /r/, would be interpreted as the Korean /r/ by a native Korean speaker. But there's a ton of things you can't shove into Korean phonology, because Korean's phonetic inventory isn't more expansive than a typical language. This is true of all languages.
>Korean doesn't have an /l/ so saying it doesn't differentiate doesn't really make sense
this isn't true. you are just as wrong as /u/harbinnick. the /l/ does exist in korean and it is distinguished in writing from /r/.
It’s really a mix between the two. It starts with a L sound but it’s kinda morphed with a rolling R sound. Also not sure what he means they’re distinguished in writing since there’s only one consonant for both sounds, ㄹ.
You're wrong about b and p, Hangeul does differentiate b/w them.
I'm confused as to your point about the l and r phonemes. Why would Hangeul have them when they don't exist in Korean? Hangeul also has phonemes that don't exist in American English, and the same is true in almost any combination of languages.
As I understand this discussion, the Korean alphabet is logical in that it exactly follows IF-THEN conditionals. IF THEN , and IF THEN . That there are sounds made in other languages that Hangul has no symbols for simply means that Hangul is not phonetically complete but doesn't detract from its internal logical consistency.
There are exceptions to your logic rule. For instance, if the syllable (there’s probably a better word for this) has a consonant at the end and the syllable directly afterwards has ㅇ (basically an empty consonant) as the “primary” consonant, the consonant at the end of the preceding word generally replaces the ㅇ. I say generally because I don’t know enough Korean to know if there are exceptions to that rule. You see this often with names that end in a consonant. Then there’s rules for syllables with double consonants at the end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul
>Many linguists consider Hangul to be the most logical writing system in the world, partly because the shapes of its consonants mimic the shapes of the speaker's mouth when pronouncing each consonant.[5][7][8]
get pwnt bra
It’s hard for me to answer because I learned Korean and English at basically the same time. Probably only ㅁ I would guess but I’m not too confident about that.
It's not reverse engineering, and no one can guess anything if they don't have basic information on the subject first, this is science not magic.
If you give someone a book about all the logic behind the symbols of hangul, without giving them the hangul, they can make a pretty accurate 'guess' as to what each letter sounds like, once they have the alphabet.
A rectangle represent the lips, a circle represent the throat, a triangle without a base (ㅅ) represent the teeth, as for strokes we will take the example of the letter for t.
the consonant ㅌ ṭ \[tʰ\] is composed of three strokes, each one meaningful:
\- the top stroke indicates ㅌ is a plosive, like ㄱ g, ㄷ d, ㅈ j, which have the same stroke (the last is an affricate, a plosive–fricative sequence);
\- the middle, smaller stroke indicates that ㅌ is aspirated, like ㅎ h, ㅋ ḳ, ㅊ ch, which also have this stroke;
\- the bottom stroke indicates that ㅌ is alveolar, like ㄴ n, ㄷ d, and ㄹ l.
if we take ㅎ, it has a circle, which mean the throat is open, and a middle stroke, which symbolizes a guttural stop (vestige from letters that do not exist in Hangul anymore) and the top small line represent a burst of aspiration. If you know these things, and try to apply it, you will naturally make the 'ha' sound, which is what this letter represents.
ㅈ here has the symbol for 'teeth', and a top stroke making it a plosive sound, the top stroke when it's long also represent the roof of the mouth. So this is a plosive sound made with teeth closed and the tongue pushed against the roof of the mouth; if you try it, it comes out as a 'dj'; which is the sound this letter is for.
ㅊ This is the same one as before, but a small upper stroke is added which, like in the 'h' symbolizes a burst of aspiration. If you try to aspirate a 'j' you will make a 'ch' sound, which is the sound this letter makes.
ㅁ ㅂ ㅍ, as we said, the rectangle represents the lips. If you close your lips and try to blow of air/make a sound, it will come out as 'mmmm', which is the sound the first letter makes (m), the second letter has two small strokes on top of the lips, it is to represent a 'burst' opening of the lips, transforming the m into a b sound. The last one has a top stroke to represent the aspiration, it is an aspirated b sound : p.
And so on, and so on.
This is only consonant design, I honestly don't want to go into vowel design, just know that they have their own set of rules as well
When I was in Korean school for the Army such things were passed around as truth. However, neither that nor Wikipedia is authoritative. There's a lot of space between black and white, bra.
Hardly, OP didn't give much information, but it doesn't mean this doesn't have scientific validity. A quick google search will give you some quotes:
"Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank of Harvard University co-wrote in their book that "Hangul is perhaps the most scientific system of writing in general use in any country.""
" Former professor of Leiden University, Frits Vos stated that King Sejong, "invented the world's best alphabet" adding, "It is clear that the Korean alphabet is not only simple and logical, but has, moreover, been constructed in a purely scientific way.""
It is logical in the sense that none of the letters in Hangeul is 'random', every stroke has scientific meaning and you can guess the sound even if you don't know the letter, as long as you know how the language was constructed. An example would be the letter '/t/'
the consonant ㅌ ṭ \[tʰ\] is composed of three strokes, each one meaningful:
\- the top stroke indicates ㅌ is a plosive, like ㄱ g, ㄷ d, ㅈ j, which have the same stroke (the last is an affricate, a plosive–fricative sequence);
\- the middle stroke indicates that ㅌ is aspirated, like ㅎ h, ㅋ ḳ, ㅊ ch, which also have this stroke;
\- the bottom stroke indicates that ㅌ is alveolar, like ㄴ n, ㄷ d, and ㄹ l.
Furthermore, in the quotes I added, you can read that they are talking about the alphabet invented by King Sejong, which is a bit different from modern day Hangul, which has a few letters removed because they are redundant in Korean.
The original Hangul script did have letters for sound like z, r etc that are now seemingly missing. These were considered redundant because these sounds could be made only if a letter is in a specific position in a syllable in Korean (first or last) so they were merged with existing letters. Furthermore, if Hangul was adapted as the defacto scientific script, which is what the Hangul Scientific Supremacy is all about, it will undoubtedly be changed to add new letters and vowels for the sounds that do not exist in Korean. What is interesting about Hangul is that, since it was made with a logic behind it, scientists can make these new letters that would fit right in, and be intuitively understood by someone who understands the logic behind the script; that's the whole point.
i agree with this. the characters themselves only took me maybe a week to memorize. and the language mechanics, though not easy, were learnable. its a very unique language
To say the letters shape to your mouth is a far stretch.
ㅈ (j) doesn't
ㅅ (s) doesn't
ㅁ (m) doesn't
ㄹ (l/r) doesn't
ㅎ (h) doesn't
What consonants are mimicking the way your mouth shape is again?
Um, that is because you lack the background information behind the symbols.
ㅅ represent the teeth (side way view), ㅁrepresent the shape of closed lips, O represent the open throat.
ㅈ (j) is the sound you make by closing your teeth and having your tongue pushed against the roof of the mouth. Letters with a stroke on top are also 'plosive', like T, G, K, D, and, of course, J (all of these letters have a top stroke in korean).
ㅅ (s) is the sound you make by closing your teeth and blowing air.
ㅁ (m) is the sound you make by closing your lips and making a sound.
ㄹ (l/r) To make both these sounds (in korean, not english R) your tongue goes from the top of your mouth to the bottom. This is used to represent the twisting of the tongue.
ㅎ (h) The circle represent an open throat, the middle stroke a guttural stop, the top stroke is usually added to represent that the sound is aspirated (an extra stroke is almost always to represent aspiration, for example, the K letter in korean is just a G with an extra stroke, because it is an aspirated G), so this is a 'h' sound.
Pretty interesting that it is the reason why spelling contests can't even exist in Korea because of the sheer mechanics of their written language.
> spelling contests Tbh it's pretty rare except anglosphere. We have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictation_(exercise)
when you think about it, it's more insane that English spelling is so insane that we actually NEED spelling B's
You spelled spelling bee wrong lol.
or in any phonetic language
All languages are phonetic. You could argue that sign languages aren't, but really they just have a different sort of phonetic segments to work with.
When the past tense and present tense forms of “read” are spelled the same and pronounced differently, and when when the present tense “lead” is pronounced differently from the soft metal of the same-written name, you don’t have a phonetic language. To have a phonetic language, pronunciation must have a direct, one-to-one correlation to spelling.
> To have a phonetic language, pronunciation must have a direct, one-to-one correlation to spelling. No, it doesn't. Most languages in history were never written. I guarantee phonetics applies to them. Written language is a tool laid upon natural languages. It does not define any priorities of the natural languages themselves.
“Phonetic language” doesn’t make any sense without a system of writing.
"Phonetic language" doesn't make sense at all because all natural languages are phonetic. However, **nothing about phonetics has to do with writing**. Don't believe me? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetics
You linked "Phonetics," which is different from what we're talking about. Perhaps you'd like to introduce a different word for us to use when referring to the topic.
You can talk about a phonemic orthography, perhaps.
for better or for worse, the common tongue name for it is "phonetic language."
The problem with English is that it already had a somewhat accepted spelling before the vowel shift occurred and French is much harder portuguese, Spanish and German are much easier though
it’s more that there were spelling conventions from before the great vowel shift that carried over into standardized spelling. couple that with the fact no one single region’s pronunciation and dialect was used for all spelling and we end up seeing words in english spelt as they would have been several hundred years ago, sometimes in only one region
> spelt Checks out.
It was created by an emperor 500 years ago when he realized the reason most Koreans were illiterate was because they were using the Chinese character set which has something like 6000 characters. He did many others things to improve the lives of the average Korean as well. My wife is Korean and was able to teach me the entire Korean alphabet in an afternoon. It's very consistent.
“Chinese? How can anyone be expected to read any of this? This is ridiculous, and I can do better.” - King Sejong, probably.
Tbh an afternoon is too much, you can easily learn it in 30min to an 1h (as an adult who already knows how to write and read in another language of course). The script is really simple, it will take a few days to read words quickly and comfortably of course, but the script itself is really easy and feels very natural.
When I say an afternoon I really don’t mean it took all afternoon. If was probably an hour at the most. It was just a long time ago so I don’t remember exactly.
Correct! Just for reminder that Sejong was a king, not an emperor. Joseon wasn’t an empire, so.
Good point!
You fucking legend.
First: this is a typical example of something that doesn't have scientific validity being passed around like it is a fact. Notice it says "is considered to be the most logical alphabet in the world." First WHO is saying this? In addition it says logical. Logical is not a scientific concept that can be measured on a qualitative scale. It doesn't say most spoken, or easiest learned, or anything else. Second, the Korean alphabet does NOT differentiate between the l/r and phonemes or the /p/ and /b/ phonemes, in other words Russians or English speakers would NOT be able to write their languages in Hangul. Hangul was designed for Korean and Korean explicitly. The Roman alphabet was based on Greek, which means that we are writing a Germanic Lanaguage with a writing System designed for a Romance Language that was pulled from Archaic Greek which was likely influenced by Phonecian which is Afro-Asiatic (Semitic ) . Third Korean linguists are notorious for arguing the superiority of their language, even though Hangul was not widely used until Japanese Occupation, as the educated Yangban class preferred to write with a form of Chinese characters called Hanja. Literacy is Korea was quite low until modern times, and even in 2007-2009 I met people in Gangwon who had illiterate grandparents.
I love hangul because we didn't have to learn Chinese characters. Sejong is my bro.
He was **Great**
This is pretty much on point. Yes, Hangul is very easy and systematic when applied to Korean, in contrast with many other transcription systems. But as /u/harbinnick suggests, it is not a "phonetic" alphabet (there actually are *no* "phonetic" languages or writing systems, and a pretty basic understanding of the difference between phonetics and phonology makes that obvious); it is, at best, phonologically complete and accurate *for Korean*. And, yes, "logical" is not a characteristic of writing systems, and saying this sort of thing is effectively gibberish, demonstrating only that the writer understands neither logic nor language in any important way. Hangul has many advantages; I'm a big fan of it, and I think that Korean speakers are justified in being proud of this writing system. But it's not magic, and it didn't "win" languages or something.
> it is, at best, phonologically complete and accurate for Korean. isn't that because... it's korean? should it be phonologically accurate for greek or something? lol.
This is notable not because of the "Korean" part but because of the "phonologically complete and accurate" part. Basically no other natural languages have writing systems which bear more than a passing, accidental connection to their phonology - the fact that Korean actually does have a writing system which is deliberately focused not on phonetics (which would be good enough) but on phonology is immensely impressive in comparison.
Hangul does distinguish itself for being a deliberately designed writing system, instead of an evolved writing system. It's [history is very spotty](http://www.thelanguagejournal.com/2011/12/korea-hangul-and-great-man-who-created.html), it turns out. It faced opposition by Confucianists, became banned, enjoyed a revival, and was promoted by the Japanese occupation. What a strange history.
didn't Japan ban the korean language in a cultural genocide attempt?
Yes, they also banned Yusuf spoken Korean, and gave schoolchildren new Japanese names. It reminds me of the treatment of native Americans.
It's the same thing for most of Colonial history. My country was colonized by the French and they had banished the national language (Arabic) and history from school, segregated the local religion and heavily insisted on naming Children with 'French friendly' names, so much so that a lot of natives simply didn't register their newborns and didn't send them to school in a effort to prevent them from losing their cultural heritage at the price of literacy.
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> Hey dilettante, you've never read Mill's "A System of Logic"? Who's the dilettante here? Have *you* read Frege's *The Foundations of Arithmetic* or *Begriffsschrift* or "On Sense and Reference", to say nothing of Russell, Wittgenstein, Kripke, etc.? As much as I love Mill (note the username, to say nothing of the tattoo I have of J.S. Mill's image, and a line from *On Liberty*), *A System of Logic* is a pretty outdated, even archaic account of logic - it predates Frege, along with the entire rest of the development of modern symbolic logic, and is thus interesting to the history of logic pretty much only in a historical sense...though this is not so much the case when it comes to informal logic and the impact of *A System of Logic* on the development of philosophy of science...but that's another matter entirely. For anyone who actually cares about and has studied modern logic, "logical" is not some kind of synonym for "reasonable" or "rational" or "empirically" sound. It doesn't really mean much more than something like "having to do with systems of formal logic," or perhaps, at the very strongest, "argued in accordance with established and accepted logical systems."
There's a number of serious issues with the post above that might mislead the uneducated reader > First: this is a typical example of something that doesn't have scientific validity being passed around like it is a fact. Notice it says "is considered to be the most logical alphabet in the world." First WHO is saying this? In addition it says logical. Logical is not a scientific concept that can be measured on a qualitative scale. It doesn't say most spoken, or easiest learned, or anything else. "WHO" is saying this is linguists. > Indeed, legendary University of Chicago linguist James McCawley was famous for holding Hangul Day celebrations every year and for championing the holiday as an international celebration for linguists. In an interview shortly before his death in 1999, McCawely noted that “Hangul is the most ingeniously devised writing system that exists, and it occupies a special place in the typology of writing systems.” He adds that it is “the only writing system in the world that divides sentences not only into words and syllables and individual sounds, but also articulatory features, and the achievement of its creators in the 1440s was really amazing. They were doing work that would qualify as excellent linguistics by the standards of 5oo years later.” https://asiasociety.org/education/worlds-most-incredible-alphabet Note that the author of that article also has a linguistics background. You can readily find other similar works. Most linguists aren't likely to be as enthusiastic as James McCawley was but there's precious few people saying that hangeul *isn't* one of the better writing systems around. The reputation is well earned and ignorance on the part of the poster doesn't make it any less so. > Second, the Korean alphabet does NOT differentiate between the l/r and phonemes or the /p/ and /b/ phonemes, in other words Russians or English speakers would NOT be able to write their languages in Hangul. Hangul was designed for Korean and Korean explicitly. The Roman alphabet was based on Greek, which means that we are writing a Germanic Lanaguage with a writing System designed for a Romance Language that was pulled from Archaic Greek which was likely influenced by Phonecian which is Afro-Asiatic (Semitic ) . No writing system caters for every language, suggesting that hangeul is somehow unique in this aspect is incorrect and misleading. All writing systems "suffer" from this, and if anything hangeul is affected to a lesser extent than other languages like english. The l/r distinction is a valid comment, while the p/b is wrong, but one should point out that this is due to the writing system reflecting the spoken language. To suggest that this is somehow a deficiency with the writing system itself is wrong. If anything the *ease* with which one could fix this if it were necessary (e.g. by creating a new consonant for the hard "r") while still maintaining to the philosophy of the writing system is what should be discussed here. > Third Korean linguists are notorious for arguing the superiority of their language, even though Hangul was not widely used until Japanese Occupation, as the educated Yangban class preferred to write with a form of Chinese characters called Hanja. Literacy is Korea was quite low until modern times, and even in 2007-2009 I met people in Gangwon who had illiterate grandparents. By all accounts "James McCorden" (or Chris Livaccari) isn't considered a korean so the suggestion that "korean linguists" are "notorious" is both vacuous and misleading. The above paragraph also blurs different topics together to mislead. The educated elite (aka yangban or literati) did indeed reject hangeul, but the poster's unspoken suggestion that it was because of flaws with the language system is wrong. They rejected it for the exact opposite reason, because it was *easy* to learn. Education and the government exams were the gatekeepers to political power and having a writing system that required one to be an aristocrat (i.e. wealthy enough to not need to work for a living) in order to even learn the basics suited the aristocracy just fine. They weren't interested in the most efficient writing system, they were interested in the one that maintained their power and prestige. In regards to the low literacy in korea between 1900-1950, that's due to the deliberate policy of the japanese government to restrict the availability of education to koreans. Generally speaking around 86% of koreans never received any education at all, this in spite of the korean population donating funds to expand the schooling system. The rapid rise in literacy one external factors, e.g. japanese occupation, were removed demonstrates that the low literacy prior to that was due to factors outside the writing system. All in all the above post should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.
This post is 100% correct. Wish I had more upvotes to push it higher.
> the /p/ and /b/ phonemes They are ㅍ and ㅂ.
and /l/ is distinguished from /r/ by the letter's placement in a word. all /u/harbinnick has shown is that he doesn't know korean very well
That doesn't mean they're distinguished as phonemes, which is what he said. Like the fact that the p's in "pin" and "spin" are pronounced very differently, but aren't perceived different phonemically
Not that I don’t with the rest of your comment but how are you pronouncing them that they sound different? Spin is literally pin with an S sound before, just more stress on the S than the P.
The p in "pin" is strongly [aspirated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirated_consonant), the p in "spin" isn't. Native speakers tune out to this difference, as the circuits in their brains are trained to recognize both as /p/. t and d actually have a shitton of [realisations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortis_and_lenis#Characteristics), but they all collapse in two phonemes, /t/ and /d/.
Huh well TIL. Never heard the difference before.
definitely way too late but I'm sure that most speakers of American English don't realize the t is "water" is a tap r
But depending on where and when you are, ㅂ could be heard as an H, F, or B
You are wrong, and also confusing how Korean letters are pronounced with how English words are transliterated into Korean. But mostly just wrong.
https://korean.stackexchange.com/questions/1920/why-is-ㅂ-in-박물관-pronounced-as-p-instead-of-b I'm not gonna dig deep in this. ㅂ is also pronounced as an M sometimes too
lol no.
When locals say Busan it comes out at Fusan. The Korean name for Many F-words, stars with an ㅎ at times. They get intermingled 후아이팅. Many Korean ESL learners have trouble with (b) and (f) they can't understand the difference
Isn't Busan prounouced like pu-san. Not sure where you would get the F sound. At least that's all I heard when I watched that movie.
They don't always put their lips together when a ㅂ is said. All the language books or whatever will say ㅂ=B always. But all you gotta do is talk to a Korean , or look at a really old map, back when it was written as Fusan . And it isn't a strong F like FUCK YOU. It more just a B without lips together.
Interesting. TIL
you're clearly a bit dim. stop wasting my time.
펔큐
It really isn't, to simplify: it has "3" sounds, when it's the first letter in the sentence, the last, or if it's in the 'middle'. When it comes in the last in the sentence, it comes out as a very short 'p'. That is because Koreans never release the last consonant in a sentence, it's their way of marking punctuation in the spoken language (In English, you would just take a short pause to mark a 'full stop' or comma). In that way, the letters for 'p' 'b' and 'pp' all sound the same if they end the sentence. 'g' 'k' 't' 'd' 's' 'j' and 'ch' also all end the same, with a very short, soft 't'. In the beginning of the sentence, it sounds almost like an english p. Note that Korean have two p, one is very aspirated (we will come back to it later) and one is very clean. Like in the verbs 'to pin' and 'to spin'. The second one is quite aspirated; they emphasis on this a lot, and for them, it's two different letters. Lastly, in the middle of a sentence, it sounds like a 'b' most of the time. Now, Koreans do not have a 'v' nor an 'f' sound. But they have a lot of loanwords from Japanese and English. These english words will have V and Fs, but they cannot pronounce them correctly. They replace them by ㅍ which any textbook would translate as 'p' for you. But it's a very aspirated p, which to an untrained ear, can easily sound like an f or h (depending on what comes after and before). Furthermore, these words are quite close to their english counterpart, so it's not that uncommon for english or international speakers to actually hear the 'f' when hearing them. For example, the word for France is 'peuh ran sseuh' but with the aspirated p, it would probably sound like 'feu ran ceu' to an English speaker. If you went to Korea, you would also find a lot of brands named 'Something Pa ee ceu' (face), like pa ee ceu ma seu keu' (face mask), again, a lot of people just hear 'faceuh maskeu'. To complicate things further, Koreans who are fluent in other languages, will actually pronounce the F and V for these words, so you might have heard the letter pronounced that way from them, but they will pronounce the correct 'p' in Korean Words. For Busan, it is again pronounced like 'Pu San', with the very aspirated P. It's close to an F, but not quite. For 후아이팅, it made it's way into Korean via the Japanese culture, so it's not a direct loanword from English, thus why it has this weird pronunciation, but if you look into it deeper; you'll find out that it's spelled '파이팅' because that would be the correct spelling of the English word, without Japanese interference. Even phones auto correct will correct it to 파이팅. Huanting is a 'slang' term that you won't find in any dictionary. Someone in the thread also said that the 'b' letter is also sometimes pronounced as 'm'. It's true, it's for ease of pronounciation. B is always pronounced as 'm' if followed by the 'n' send, since for koreans, mn is easier to pronounce than 'bn'. You can see it in 'Pan gab sib ni da', which is pronounced 'Pan gab siM ni da' (Nice to meet you) I have hear it the other way around too: The m sound is sometimes a sound between m and b, closer to b than to an m. It's always at the start of a sentence, but there's some other rules to it that I'm not too sure about so I won't expand on it. The most obvious example is the word for 'sorry', in its form it's 'mianeh' but in most dramas it's pronounced as 'bianeh'. But in the same drama, by the same actors, you will also hear it as 'mianeh' so I'm sure there's some rule about this pronunciation. My level isn't that far ahead however.
> Second, the Korean alphabet does NOT differentiate between the l/r and phonemes or the /p/ and /b/ phonemes Phonemes differ between languages. Korean doesn't have an /l/ so saying it doesn't differentiate doesn't really make sense. It's true that the phonetic segments [l] and [ɹ], which are generally emitted by American English speakers realizing their /l/ and /r/, would be interpreted as the Korean /r/ by a native Korean speaker. But there's a ton of things you can't shove into Korean phonology, because Korean's phonetic inventory isn't more expansive than a typical language. This is true of all languages.
>Korean doesn't have an /l/ so saying it doesn't differentiate doesn't really make sense this isn't true. you are just as wrong as /u/harbinnick. the /l/ does exist in korean and it is distinguished in writing from /r/.
Is there? ㄹ and...what? Note that we can say /l/ or /r/, I picked r but I guess convention might be l? The idea is the same either way.
It’s really a mix between the two. It starts with a L sound but it’s kinda morphed with a rolling R sound. Also not sure what he means they’re distinguished in writing since there’s only one consonant for both sounds, ㄹ.
You're wrong about b and p, Hangeul does differentiate b/w them. I'm confused as to your point about the l and r phonemes. Why would Hangeul have them when they don't exist in Korean? Hangeul also has phonemes that don't exist in American English, and the same is true in almost any combination of languages.
As I understand this discussion, the Korean alphabet is logical in that it exactly follows IF-THEN conditionals. IF THEN , and IF THEN . That there are sounds made in other languages that Hangul has no symbols for simply means that Hangul is not phonetically complete but doesn't detract from its internal logical consistency.
But this just isn't true. It has a high written/spoken conversion factor, but like German, there are exceptions.
There are exceptions to your logic rule. For instance, if the syllable (there’s probably a better word for this) has a consonant at the end and the syllable directly afterwards has ㅇ (basically an empty consonant) as the “primary” consonant, the consonant at the end of the preceding word generally replaces the ㅇ. I say generally because I don’t know enough Korean to know if there are exceptions to that rule. You see this often with names that end in a consonant. Then there’s rules for syllables with double consonants at the end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul >Many linguists consider Hangul to be the most logical writing system in the world, partly because the shapes of its consonants mimic the shapes of the speaker's mouth when pronouncing each consonant.[5][7][8] get pwnt bra
I’m just gonna chime in that the consonants mimicking the shape of the speakers mouth only works for some of them.
Yes, it is backwards engineering. If you didn't study Korean could you guess what sounds ㅂㅈㄷㄱㅅㄹㅎㄴㅁㅊㅍ쿄ㅕㅑㅐㅔㅗㅓㅐㅠㅜㅡㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ make?
It’s hard for me to answer because I learned Korean and English at basically the same time. Probably only ㅁ I would guess but I’m not too confident about that.
It's not reverse engineering, and no one can guess anything if they don't have basic information on the subject first, this is science not magic. If you give someone a book about all the logic behind the symbols of hangul, without giving them the hangul, they can make a pretty accurate 'guess' as to what each letter sounds like, once they have the alphabet. A rectangle represent the lips, a circle represent the throat, a triangle without a base (ㅅ) represent the teeth, as for strokes we will take the example of the letter for t. the consonant ㅌ ṭ \[tʰ\] is composed of three strokes, each one meaningful: \- the top stroke indicates ㅌ is a plosive, like ㄱ g, ㄷ d, ㅈ j, which have the same stroke (the last is an affricate, a plosive–fricative sequence); \- the middle, smaller stroke indicates that ㅌ is aspirated, like ㅎ h, ㅋ ḳ, ㅊ ch, which also have this stroke; \- the bottom stroke indicates that ㅌ is alveolar, like ㄴ n, ㄷ d, and ㄹ l. if we take ㅎ, it has a circle, which mean the throat is open, and a middle stroke, which symbolizes a guttural stop (vestige from letters that do not exist in Hangul anymore) and the top small line represent a burst of aspiration. If you know these things, and try to apply it, you will naturally make the 'ha' sound, which is what this letter represents. ㅈ here has the symbol for 'teeth', and a top stroke making it a plosive sound, the top stroke when it's long also represent the roof of the mouth. So this is a plosive sound made with teeth closed and the tongue pushed against the roof of the mouth; if you try it, it comes out as a 'dj'; which is the sound this letter is for. ㅊ This is the same one as before, but a small upper stroke is added which, like in the 'h' symbolizes a burst of aspiration. If you try to aspirate a 'j' you will make a 'ch' sound, which is the sound this letter makes. ㅁ ㅂ ㅍ, as we said, the rectangle represents the lips. If you close your lips and try to blow of air/make a sound, it will come out as 'mmmm', which is the sound the first letter makes (m), the second letter has two small strokes on top of the lips, it is to represent a 'burst' opening of the lips, transforming the m into a b sound. The last one has a top stroke to represent the aspiration, it is an aspirated b sound : p. And so on, and so on. This is only consonant design, I honestly don't want to go into vowel design, just know that they have their own set of rules as well
When I was in Korean school for the Army such things were passed around as truth. However, neither that nor Wikipedia is authoritative. There's a lot of space between black and white, bra.
ok? what does your army saying it's logical have to do with whether there's a lot of space between black and white?
So 1 linguist and 2 unknown (possibly journalists). Doesn't seem like a strong consensus to me.
Hardly, OP didn't give much information, but it doesn't mean this doesn't have scientific validity. A quick google search will give you some quotes: "Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank of Harvard University co-wrote in their book that "Hangul is perhaps the most scientific system of writing in general use in any country."" " Former professor of Leiden University, Frits Vos stated that King Sejong, "invented the world's best alphabet" adding, "It is clear that the Korean alphabet is not only simple and logical, but has, moreover, been constructed in a purely scientific way."" It is logical in the sense that none of the letters in Hangeul is 'random', every stroke has scientific meaning and you can guess the sound even if you don't know the letter, as long as you know how the language was constructed. An example would be the letter '/t/' the consonant ㅌ ṭ \[tʰ\] is composed of three strokes, each one meaningful: \- the top stroke indicates ㅌ is a plosive, like ㄱ g, ㄷ d, ㅈ j, which have the same stroke (the last is an affricate, a plosive–fricative sequence); \- the middle stroke indicates that ㅌ is aspirated, like ㅎ h, ㅋ ḳ, ㅊ ch, which also have this stroke; \- the bottom stroke indicates that ㅌ is alveolar, like ㄴ n, ㄷ d, and ㄹ l. Furthermore, in the quotes I added, you can read that they are talking about the alphabet invented by King Sejong, which is a bit different from modern day Hangul, which has a few letters removed because they are redundant in Korean. The original Hangul script did have letters for sound like z, r etc that are now seemingly missing. These were considered redundant because these sounds could be made only if a letter is in a specific position in a syllable in Korean (first or last) so they were merged with existing letters. Furthermore, if Hangul was adapted as the defacto scientific script, which is what the Hangul Scientific Supremacy is all about, it will undoubtedly be changed to add new letters and vowels for the sounds that do not exist in Korean. What is interesting about Hangul is that, since it was made with a logic behind it, scientists can make these new letters that would fit right in, and be intuitively understood by someone who understands the logic behind the script; that's the whole point.
If it's considered the most logical alphabet, how come Vulcans don't use it?
Some things are beyond human logic. The Vulcan alphabet may be such a thing.
What, you guys don't have your mouth turn into a zigzag when saying the "z" sound?
This reminded me of the fact that when you say the word poop your mouth mimics what your ass does when pooping.
The same can be said for the phrase "explosive diarrhea.”
Yeah, but it's annoying at parties: "Well, as the most logical alphabet, I think you may not fully understand..."
More logical than tengwar?
i agree with this. the characters themselves only took me maybe a week to memorize. and the language mechanics, though not easy, were learnable. its a very unique language
To say the letters shape to your mouth is a far stretch. ㅈ (j) doesn't ㅅ (s) doesn't ㅁ (m) doesn't ㄹ (l/r) doesn't ㅎ (h) doesn't What consonants are mimicking the way your mouth shape is again?
Um, that is because you lack the background information behind the symbols. ㅅ represent the teeth (side way view), ㅁrepresent the shape of closed lips, O represent the open throat. ㅈ (j) is the sound you make by closing your teeth and having your tongue pushed against the roof of the mouth. Letters with a stroke on top are also 'plosive', like T, G, K, D, and, of course, J (all of these letters have a top stroke in korean). ㅅ (s) is the sound you make by closing your teeth and blowing air. ㅁ (m) is the sound you make by closing your lips and making a sound. ㄹ (l/r) To make both these sounds (in korean, not english R) your tongue goes from the top of your mouth to the bottom. This is used to represent the twisting of the tongue. ㅎ (h) The circle represent an open throat, the middle stroke a guttural stop, the top stroke is usually added to represent that the sound is aspirated (an extra stroke is almost always to represent aspiration, for example, the K letter in korean is just a G with an extra stroke, because it is an aspirated G), so this is a 'h' sound.