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I think Koran is quite interesting. The symbols were designed from scratch iirc. and they are extremly logical. I'd argue that most people will be able to read

by kriro 4y ago

I think Koran is quite interesting. The symbols were designed from scratch iirc. and they are extremly logical. I'd argue that most people will be able to read and correctly pronounce Korean in a couple of days (even if they don't understand a single word the are saying) which is quite astonishing. I was pleasently surprised at the logical structure. When I first saw the symbols my western brain said "oh my, this is complex and hard". I was shocked how wrong I was.

jhvkjhk 4y ago
yurishimo 4y ago
In the 15th century, the Korean king at the time decided to revamp the entire alphabet. It's consistent and phonetic. There are 24 basic "letters" and 27 complex "letters" that are a combination of the basic letters. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language I've been tempted to learn Korean since I discovered this factoid, but haven't found a program or the time that I can stick to. Anecdotally, I'm learning Dutch right now to prepare to move overseas next month, and the basics haven't been that difficult. I feel pretty confident that I can order food and exchange daily phrases after only a few dozen hours of practice. Lucky for me, the Dutch also speak excellent English, but I'm trying to learn anyway!
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Hah, I was going to say, you’d be fine even if you didn’t learn anything. Still, if you can speak Dutch it’s appreciated, especially in less international areas.
- int_19h 4y ago
  The interesting part about Hangeul isn't so much so that it's phonetic - that property is not that uncommon; e.g. modern Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian orthographies are about 99% phonetic. It's that it's featural, meaning that the shapes of the letters are mnemonic and represent their sound values and/or relations between them (e.g. vowel harmony). Featural scripts are pretty rare - it seems that they never evolve naturally, so it's something that has to be constructed, and then also to become popular for long enough to stick around. The only example I know of other than Hangeul is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics, and they are noticeably less featural. (Featural scripts for conlangs are more common - e.g. for Lojban, there's Zbalermorna: https://jackhumbert.github.io/zbalermorna/write-up/ https://jackhumbert.github.io/zbalermorna/write-up/) One thing to keep in mind though is that Hangeul was very systematic and consistent back when it was designed. But languages evolve, and they evolve much faster in the absence of widespread literacy and mass media. And Hangeul is almost 600 years old now. So e.g. ㅐ was originally the diphthong "ai", consisting of ㅏ for "a" and ㅣ for "i", but it's now pronounced "e" - not dissimilar to English, actually, but with much more rapid and drastic changes. At this point, it's actually less phonemic than Serbo-Croatian.
yomkippur 4y ago
I think Korean is being learned at far greater pace, zoomers think Korea is cool and want to live that ideal kpop world. No need to learn kanji which means its a lot more approacheable. I would say hebrew is also another interesting alphabet system
- innocentoldguy 4y ago
  Korean uses Kanji, or Hanja, too.
  - yomkippur 4y ago
    Not anymore. Certainly never to the extent Japanese relies on it on a daily use case basis. Go ahead and downvote me for this Up until 90s, early 2000s it was common to read Hanja in newspapers. Starting around 10 years ago they all disappeared. English words have largely replaced complicated Chinese characters and young Koreans no longer learn it. Instead English loan words are now used so much that most Koreans can't go a few paragraph without using it. Downside it leads to confusion as to what the original Korean words meant. But for sure it is not comparable to Japanese which absolutely requires you to memorize a few thousand Chinese characters, their strokes, pronounciation and meaning.
innocentoldguy 4y ago
I agree! Hangul is the most interesting writing system I’ve studied so far (I’m also fluent in Japanese and can read/write kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana) and it only took me 2 hours to learn. Being fluent in Japanese already made learning Korean a lot easier too, since the phonetics and grammar structures are so similar.

by kriro 4y ago

jhvkjhk 4y ago

yurishimo 4y ago

In the 15th century, the Korean king at the time decided to revamp the entire alphabet. It's consistent and phonetic. There are 24 basic "letters" and 27 complex "letters" that are a combination of the basic letters. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language I've been tempted to learn Korean since I discovered this factoid, but haven't found a program or the time that I can stick to. Anecdotally, I'm learning Dutch right now to prepare to move overseas next month, and the basics haven't been that difficult. I feel pretty confident that I can order food and exchange daily phrases after only a few dozen hours of practice. Lucky for me, the Dutch also speak excellent English, but I'm trying to learn anyway!

Aeolun 4y ago
Hah, I was going to say, you’d be fine even if you didn’t learn anything. Still, if you can speak Dutch it’s appreciated, especially in less international areas.
int_19h 4y ago
The interesting part about Hangeul isn't so much so that it's phonetic - that property is not that uncommon; e.g. modern Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian orthographies are about 99% phonetic. It's that it's featural, meaning that the shapes of the letters are mnemonic and represent their sound values and/or relations between them (e.g. vowel harmony). Featural scripts are pretty rare - it seems that they never evolve naturally, so it's something that has to be constructed, and then also to become popular for long enough to stick around. The only example I know of other than Hangeul is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Aboriginal_syllabics, and they are noticeably less featural. (Featural scripts for conlangs are more common - e.g. for Lojban, there's Zbalermorna: https://jackhumbert.github.io/zbalermorna/write-up/ https://jackhumbert.github.io/zbalermorna/write-up/) One thing to keep in mind though is that Hangeul was very systematic and consistent back when it was designed. But languages evolve, and they evolve much faster in the absence of widespread literacy and mass media. And Hangeul is almost 600 years old now. So e.g. ㅐ was originally the diphthong "ai", consisting of ㅏ for "a" and ㅣ for "i", but it's now pronounced "e" - not dissimilar to English, actually, but with much more rapid and drastic changes. At this point, it's actually less phonemic than Serbo-Croatian.

yomkippur 4y ago

I think Korean is being learned at far greater pace, zoomers think Korea is cool and want to live that ideal kpop world. No need to learn kanji which means its a lot more approacheable. I would say hebrew is also another interesting alphabet system

innocentoldguy 4y ago
Korean uses Kanji, or Hanja, too.
- yomkippur 4y ago
  Not anymore. Certainly never to the extent Japanese relies on it on a daily use case basis. Go ahead and downvote me for this Up until 90s, early 2000s it was common to read Hanja in newspapers. Starting around 10 years ago they all disappeared. English words have largely replaced complicated Chinese characters and young Koreans no longer learn it. Instead English loan words are now used so much that most Koreans can't go a few paragraph without using it. Downside it leads to confusion as to what the original Korean words meant. But for sure it is not comparable to Japanese which absolutely requires you to memorize a few thousand Chinese characters, their strokes, pronounciation and meaning.

innocentoldguy 4y ago

I agree! Hangul is the most interesting writing system I’ve studied so far (I’m also fluent in Japanese and can read/write kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana) and it only took me 2 hours to learn. Being fluent in Japanese already made learning Korean a lot easier too, since the phonetics and grammar structures are so similar.