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> And I fail to see the need for quotes, there's really no denying hangul is simpler than hanja. Simpler is a culturally conditioned subjective value judgement

> And I fail to see the need for quotes, there's really no denying hangul is simpler than hanja. Simpler is a culturally conditioned subjective value judgement rather than a scientific one and therefore it expresses an opinionated view. It may be more correct to say it is a more systematic script.

MarkPNeyer 4y ago
There are numerous mathematical measures of complexity. Do you think people believe “tic tac toe is simpler than chess” because of cultural conditioning?
affgrff2 4y ago
I quickly googled: Hangul has 24 different symbols/characters. Hanja had something around 214 radicals that can be combined to thousands of meanings.
- modernpink 4y ago
  So in which case Korean can said to be a "simpler" language than Chinese (which uses Hanja). But in modern linguistics you would not exactly say any language is "simpler".
  - masklinn 4y ago
    Langage and script are two completely different and largely orthogonal concerns. While there is a “floor” to the complexity of a script in its ability to faithfully reproduce a langage, there is no “ceiling”, you can always pile on complexity. Although I would say that logographic scripts are the other kind of complexity, they’re complicated to learn and use because they’re simplistic in their approach. Syllabic or alphabetic scripts require higher concepts, but that makes them more flexible and composable.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    There’s also the fact that Hangul is phonetic, whereas Hanja has very little to do with Korean language that isn’t of Chinese origin. Hangul is simpler, that’s not really in dispute. It was literally designed to be simple so that a native speaker could become literate in ten days.
    - tokinonagare 4y ago
      > There’s also the fact that Hangul is phonetic Hangul is not phonetic, it's a morphophonemic script. The Korean language has a lot of rules that applies at different boundaries, which make the pronunciation of words different from what is written. The best example of this is the "Korean wave" /han/ + /lyu/ => [hallyu], written has "hanlyu" (한류) which is conforming to the phonemic decomposition but certainly not to how the word is pronounced.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
I understand that many things in life are cultural and relative. Saying one language is "easier" may reveal many biases. But "simpler" can be used in fairly objective ways. Spoon is a simpler mechanism than internal combustion engine. "Yes" is a simpler way of saying "absolutely I would be willing to undertake that endeavour". Square of plain colour is simpler than a painting. Some formula are simpler than others. In this case the Immediate difference in sheer count makes it difficult for me to understand what point you're trying to make about this particular example, try as I might, because in this case I aftually think "more systematic" is the less defined, more ambiguous term :-(
cwillu 4y ago
“If” “we” “take” “that” “argument” “to” “it's” “logical” “conclusion” “…”
AlbertCory 4y ago
The State Department has long experience with teaching employees a working capacity in other languages. [1] is the summary of it. Obviously, "native English-speaking" is assumed, so the time for a Mandarin speaker to learn Swahili or vice versa is not considered. This isn't really "complexity" in a universal sense. It would be interesting to see a similar chart from the Chinese foreign service's language institute (I assume they must have one). Or the Egyptian one. [1] https://www.atlasandboots.com/travel-blog/foreign-service-institute-language-difficulty/ https://www.atlasandboots.com/travel-blog/foreign-service-in...
- rawgabbit 4y ago
  It’s interesting the site says Vietnamese takes 44 weeks versus 88 weeks for Korean. I assume it’s because Vietnamese has a western alphabet. But I thought Vietnamese pronunciation was more difficult due to tones.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    No idea. But at least this is empirical data from a lot of samples. What if we had the results of learning difficulty for native speakers of all the major languages, and some languages were hard for everyone? In principle, this is an experiment that's doable, if the foreign ministries of the other countries also publish this data.

MarkPNeyer 4y ago

There are numerous mathematical measures of complexity. Do you think people believe “tic tac toe is simpler than chess” because of cultural conditioning?

affgrff2 4y ago

I quickly googled: Hangul has 24 different symbols/characters. Hanja had something around 214 radicals that can be combined to thousands of meanings.

modernpink 4y ago
So in which case Korean can said to be a "simpler" language than Chinese (which uses Hanja). But in modern linguistics you would not exactly say any language is "simpler".
- masklinn 4y ago
  Langage and script are two completely different and largely orthogonal concerns. While there is a “floor” to the complexity of a script in its ability to faithfully reproduce a langage, there is no “ceiling”, you can always pile on complexity. Although I would say that logographic scripts are the other kind of complexity, they’re complicated to learn and use because they’re simplistic in their approach. Syllabic or alphabetic scripts require higher concepts, but that makes them more flexible and composable.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  There’s also the fact that Hangul is phonetic, whereas Hanja has very little to do with Korean language that isn’t of Chinese origin. Hangul is simpler, that’s not really in dispute. It was literally designed to be simple so that a native speaker could become literate in ten days.
  - tokinonagare 4y ago
    > There’s also the fact that Hangul is phonetic Hangul is not phonetic, it's a morphophonemic script. The Korean language has a lot of rules that applies at different boundaries, which make the pronunciation of words different from what is written. The best example of this is the "Korean wave" /han/ + /lyu/ => [hallyu], written has "hanlyu" (한류) which is conforming to the phonemic decomposition but certainly not to how the word is pronounced.

NikolaNovak 4y ago

I understand that many things in life are cultural and relative. Saying one language is "easier" may reveal many biases. But "simpler" can be used in fairly objective ways. Spoon is a simpler mechanism than internal combustion engine. "Yes" is a simpler way of saying "absolutely I would be willing to undertake that endeavour". Square of plain colour is simpler than a painting. Some formula are simpler than others. In this case the Immediate difference in sheer count makes it difficult for me to understand what point you're trying to make about this particular example, try as I might, because in this case I aftually think "more systematic" is the less defined, more ambiguous term :-(

cwillu 4y ago

“If” “we” “take” “that” “argument” “to” “it's” “logical” “conclusion” “…”

AlbertCory 4y ago

The State Department has long experience with teaching employees a working capacity in other languages. [1] is the summary of it. Obviously, "native English-speaking" is assumed, so the time for a Mandarin speaker to learn Swahili or vice versa is not considered. This isn't really "complexity" in a universal sense. It would be interesting to see a similar chart from the Chinese foreign service's language institute (I assume they must have one). Or the Egyptian one. [1] https://www.atlasandboots.com/travel-blog/foreign-service-institute-language-difficulty/ https://www.atlasandboots.com/travel-blog/foreign-service-in...

rawgabbit 4y ago
It’s interesting the site says Vietnamese takes 44 weeks versus 88 weeks for Korean. I assume it’s because Vietnamese has a western alphabet. But I thought Vietnamese pronunciation was more difficult due to tones.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  No idea. But at least this is empirical data from a lot of samples. What if we had the results of learning difficulty for native speakers of all the major languages, and some languages were hard for everyone? In principle, this is an experiment that's doable, if the foreign ministries of the other countries also publish this data.