5 ms·

Korean is not a tonal language. But Hangul is great, I wish Thailand would adopt it.

monocasa 5y ago
The same idea works tonemes distinguished by common graphical features as well.
VygmraMGVl 5y ago
When Hangul was invented, Korean was tonal and Hangul accounted for this with diacritics. Apparently some dialects of Korean are still tonal. https://autolingual.com/korean-tones/ https://autolingual.com/korean-tones/
karmakaze 5y ago
Thai spoken language is the opposite extreme of German, vowels are the salient parts and consonants are often barely present and highly interchangeable. I don't know how the Thai written language works or how complex it is in comparison but I imagine it also wouldn't be a straightforward mapping. Quick lookup says it's tonal and analytic [idk what this is] like Chinese and Vietnamese.
- dwohnitmok 5y ago
  Analytic languages tend to spread complex meaning across multiple words (e.g. stuff like when an action happened or the ordering of actions, etc.). Its opposite is synthetic languages, that tend to group complex meaning into a single word, such as via inflections (e.g. different tenses, prefixes, suffixes, etc.) or agglutination (glomming multiple words into a single word). So for example analytic languages tend to lack things like complex verb conjugation systems and instead use context or additional words to mark information about the time, subject, object, etc. of a verb. English for example is usually considered fairly analytic. While there are inflections, they tend to be a lot simpler than many other languages.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  If you wanna see a complicated writing system check out Bernese in Myanmar. It’s like a bunch of circles.
WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
> But Hangul is great, I wish Thailand would adopt it. What a weird wish. Does Hangul even have ways to write the in-between consonants in Thai like dt or bp? Does Hangul even have the Thai vowel sound ื (which certainly has no unambiguous way to be written in English)? And then what about tones? Tones in Thai are not written explicitly, but computed based on a number of factors including character classes, length of vowel sound (does Hangul have a way to indicate short or long vowels?), end-of-syllable sound, and tone mark. If you wrote Thai in Hangul, how would you pay homage to loan words from Pali/Sanskrit? Again, just... what a weird wish!
- shard 5y ago
  I don't know Thai, but if Thai has an F sound, or if there are distinct L and R sounds, then Hangul would need new symbols.
Markoff 5y ago
But why? Vietnamese are doing just find with Latin alphabet with few extra characters (same as many Slavic languages). You don't need any special writing system to have tones in regular alphabet.

The same idea works tonemes distinguished by common graphical features as well.

When Hangul was invented, Korean was tonal and Hangul accounted for this with diacritics. Apparently some dialects of Korean are still tonal. https://autolingual.com/korean-tones/ https://autolingual.com/korean-tones/

karmakaze 5y ago

Thai spoken language is the opposite extreme of German, vowels are the salient parts and consonants are often barely present and highly interchangeable. I don't know how the Thai written language works or how complex it is in comparison but I imagine it also wouldn't be a straightforward mapping. Quick lookup says it's tonal and analytic [idk what this is] like Chinese and Vietnamese.

dwohnitmok 5y ago
Analytic languages tend to spread complex meaning across multiple words (e.g. stuff like when an action happened or the ordering of actions, etc.). Its opposite is synthetic languages, that tend to group complex meaning into a single word, such as via inflections (e.g. different tenses, prefixes, suffixes, etc.) or agglutination (glomming multiple words into a single word). So for example analytic languages tend to lack things like complex verb conjugation systems and instead use context or additional words to mark information about the time, subject, object, etc. of a verb. English for example is usually considered fairly analytic. While there are inflections, they tend to be a lot simpler than many other languages.
philliphaydon 5y ago
If you wanna see a complicated writing system check out Bernese in Myanmar. It’s like a bunch of circles.

WaxedChewbacca 5y ago

> But Hangul is great, I wish Thailand would adopt it. What a weird wish. Does Hangul even have ways to write the in-between consonants in Thai like dt or bp? Does Hangul even have the Thai vowel sound ื (which certainly has no unambiguous way to be written in English)? And then what about tones? Tones in Thai are not written explicitly, but computed based on a number of factors including character classes, length of vowel sound (does Hangul have a way to indicate short or long vowels?), end-of-syllable sound, and tone mark. If you wrote Thai in Hangul, how would you pay homage to loan words from Pali/Sanskrit? Again, just... what a weird wish!

shard 5y ago
I don't know Thai, but if Thai has an F sound, or if there are distinct L and R sounds, then Hangul would need new symbols.

Markoff 5y ago

But why? Vietnamese are doing just find with Latin alphabet with few extra characters (same as many Slavic languages). You don't need any special writing system to have tones in regular alphabet.