Thursday 11 April 2002
Korean vs Japanese writing
I look forward to reading the mini-essay that Chris at EmptyBottle has promised to write on “the simple elegance of the Korean alphabet.” He’s correct in contrasting “the simplicity and directness” of Hangul, the Korean alphabet of 24 characters, with “the Byzantine complexities of written Japanese”: hiragana has 46 basic syllables plus another 61 derivatives; katakana duplicates these 107 syllables using more angular characters; plus there are the 1945 Joyo Kanji, the Chinese characters in general use in Japan.
I had little trouble learning the hiragana and katakana, and am well on the way to learning the 1200 or so Kanji that will enable me to read Japanese with relative ease. I worry now that Chris will make some inference about my character, based on the fact that I tried to learn the 24 Hangul characters before I went to Korea in 1994 but couldn’t make any sense of them at all.
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...Not at all, my friend. It's difficult to find a coherent explanation of those few hangul characters, in part because not many seem to be interested, and oddly, Koreans in their efforts at self-promotion are more interested in telling everyone how delicious kim-chi is rather than talking about what is perhaps the most elegant alphabet on the planet. I'll try to make a reasonable stab at explaining it, though...
Stavros is right, self-promotion in Korea is a big thing, but often done in a very gauche way... However, kimch'i IS good (my mother-in-law's is the best!). Strangely enough, I have seen many fellow French expats picking up Hangul very fast (not that they did anything with that knowledge thereafter). Hangul is really easy, but like Korean itself, you have to forget everything you know about writing to learn it. On the other hand, pronounciation is not easy... Didier, in Seoul
This discussion is now closed. My thanks to everyone who contributed.
© Copyright 2002-2003 Jonathon Delacour
...Not at all, my friend. It's difficult to find a coherent explanation of those few hangul characters, in part because not many seem to be interested, and oddly, Koreans in their efforts at self-promotion are more interested in telling everyone how delicious kim-chi is rather than talking about what is perhaps the most elegant alphabet on the planet. I'll try to make a reasonable stab at explaining it, though...
Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken on 12 April 2002 at 04:22 AM