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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 comple

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.

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.