Happy Hangul Day in Korea!

"A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over;   a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days." 

Annually celebrated by Koreans on October 9th, Hangul (Hanguel) is regarded as one of the most
systematic alphabets in the world; this beautiful native Korean alphabet was invented by King Sejong (r. 1418-1450).   The hangul alphabet is the culmination of a methodical and logical process; it is not only easy to learn and convenient to use, but also rather scientific.

Proclaimed by “King Sejong the Great”, who believed that all Koreans should be literate, which until this day in 1443, was reserved for the few elite.  Literacy skills were only taught to noble class Korean men, who had the privilege of learning the period’s current written language adapted from the Chinese character system (hanja), which proved to be complex and difficult to teach and learn by mainstream Koreans.

The Yangbans (noble class) were vehemently opposed to the creation of such mainstream literacy efforts, fearing social unrest resulting from having too many literate and educated common class people.  

What makes the system especially scientific is that it only distinguishes those sounds which are important to the spoken language. Its symbols reflect psychologically relevant features acquainted with the Korean culture.

The new alphabet was made up of 28 characters, each of which was based on a simplified diagram of the patterns made by the mouth, when one made the sound related to the character - a rendition of spoken sound. 

Unlike most writing systems, which evolve over long periods of time, taking on variations and even inconsistencies throughout regions and time periods, the hangul system was consciously engineered and dissimulated as a complete literacy system by a royal proclamation.   

This new literacy system was designed to be easily learned and be used by everyone, of all social classes, both men and women, and even children.  

One’s capability of learning the new system usage was summed up by scholars: “A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days." 

Fun Facts about the Korean Language: 

• Korean (한국어/조선말) is the official language of South Korea and North Korea, as well as one of the two official languages in China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.
• Approximately 80 million people speak Korean worldwide. Korean is also spoken in large ethnic Korean communities in China, Japan, the USA and Central Asia.
• For over a millennium, Korean was written with adapted Chinese characters called hanja, complemented by phonetic systems like hyangchal, gugyeol, and idu.
• Most historical linguists classify Korean as an isolate—a language with no known relationship to any other languages while some consider it to be in the controversial Altaic language family.
• Korean has numerous small local dialects (called mal (말) ["speech"], saturi (사투리), or bang'eon (방언) in Korean). The standard language (pyojuneo or pyojunmal) of both South Korea and North Korea is based on the dialect of Seoul.

 Have a go at it!  Check out this fun hangul script generator. 

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