Happy Hangul Day!

October 9th marks the national celebration of the Korean writing system, Hangul! Hangul means “the Great Script” and is a point of pride for the Korean nation. The Korean alphabet is often referred to as the most scientific and systematic writing system because rather than developing and changing over a long period of time, it was created quickly with the goal that each letter would match one sound.

The Creation of Hangul

This year the Korean writing system is turning 570 years old! So how did Koreans write things down before Hangul was invented? For the majority of Korea’s history Chinese characters were used to write. Yet contrary to popular belief, Korean language was not derived from Chinese. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese languages are not related, yet during this time all three languages used the writing system invented by China. It was because the Chinese writing system is not phonetic (meaning you can’t sound out a word or know how to pronounce it just by looking at it), that Korea was able to borrow the symbols for their own language for a long period of time.

Even though this system worked well, in the 1400’s a great king by the name of Sejong realized that the Chinese characters were very difficult for common people to learn. During that time, only the rich had the ability to buy books and study. Without diligent studying, it was almost impossible to become literate. King Sejong the Great had compassion on the common people and wanted them to be able to express themselves in writing. For that reason he set out to create a new writing system that would be easy for all people to learn. King Sejong drew the alphabet so that each letter represented the way the tongue moved in the mouth. His goal was to create an alphabet that could be learned in a day and could provide one letter for one sound (compare this to English: for example, “ph” and “f” can make the same or different sounds). The first book containing instructions on how to learn Hangul was released on October 9th, 1446.

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Learning Hangul

Let’s learn how to read Hangul! Follow the link and get yourself acquainted with the Korean alphabet! http://www.ryanestrada.com/learntoreadkoreanin15minutes/

Hangul is an alphabet just like English. There are 10 basic vowels and 14 basic consonants. In English, we write every letter in a row straight across the page. In Korean, however, the letters are stacked into syllable blocks. Each syllable must include at least a consonant and a vowel. If you want to add another consonant to the end, you place it underneath the first two creating a block.

Confused yet? It may seem a little confusing at first because it’s so different from English, but it’s really simple! If you think you got the hang of it, try pronouncing these words:

안녕하세요 – Hello! (or 안녕 informally) [annyeong haseyo]

뭐해? – What’cha doin? [mwo hey?]

친구 – Friend [chingu]

선생님 – Teacher [sunsaengneem]

사랑해 – I love you [saranghey]

My Experience Learning Korean

Learning Korean has been such a joy for me. I became interested in learning Korean my junior year of high school and decided to self-teach myself a bit. At first, learning was very difficult because Korean is so different from English and I didn’t have a teacher to explain! However, I found Korean so interesting that I kept trying and eventually started taking classes at my college. As I learned more, I became even more interested! Korean is very, very different than English – this makes it difficult but also very fascinating to learn. I’m thankful I studied before I came to Korea because now I can read and write quickly as well as have small conversations in Korean!

This Week’s Response

This week, I’d like to hear your thoughts about language and language learning! Please leave a comment on this post and consider these questions:

• Do you know a second language or have you tried learning one? If you do know a second language, are you comfortable using it?
• Have you ever been in a situation where it was difficult to communicate with someone because of a language barrier? How did you feel?
• What are the pros and cons of learning more that one language? Do you think that people should learn more than one language? Why?

As always, if you had any interesting thoughts while you were reading this post or if you have any questions, feel free to include those in your comments! Have a lovely week everyone!