3 ms·
I might be biased as I’m Korean myself, but written Korean is probably the easiest of the East Asian languages to read if for no other reason than that you don’
by decafninja 3y ago
I might be biased as I’m Korean myself, but written Korean is probably the easiest of the East Asian languages to read if for no other reason than that you don’t have to memorize hundreds to a thousand+ Chinese characters as in Chinese or Japanese to become functionally literate.
Chinese characters (called Hanja) are still used here and there in Korea but they are very rare and you don’t need to know them at all to function. Versus Japan where knowing Kanji is pretty much necessary.
- idontknowifican 3y agowasnt it created to do this on purpose?
- decafninja 3y agoYes, but if I recall my personal life correctly, there were many holdouts of Hanja use as recently as the 1980s and 1990s. I remember seeing my dad’s newspapers were full of Chinese characters and were nearly unreadable for me. Hanja was also heavily taught while I was in grade school. Now, I don’t think it is, or at least nowhere near to the same extent? There are still people (mostly elderly arch-conservatives) that bemoan the decline of Hanja use in Korean society, much like how some conservative Catholics bemoan not having Latin Mass. Kind of like the Greek vs. Latin discussion in that recent thread on the Byzantine Empire, even after Hangul was invented, knowing Hanja was probably a sign of being educated, elite, or part of the nobility. Nowadays no one cares other than as a curiosity.