Han’gul is the most widely used script on the Korean
peninsula. In North Korea, the other
script, Hanja, is not used at all, and in South Korea, Hanja is treated much
the same way cursive is in English speaking countries. This is what Hanja looks like:
In Korea, much like in Japan and Vietnam, the first
writing was in an adaptation of the Chinese system. This system, known as a logosyllabary,
includes thousands of signs, each representing a different sound and
concept. The system works very well for
the Chinese family of languages, as the most widely spoken of them tend to be
isolating languages, meaning they don’t have a lot of conjugation. However, this poses a problem for languages that try
to borrow the script. Korean and
Japanese both are considered agglutinating languages, meaning that there are
lots of prefixes and suffixes that get attached to words in order to change
them. The Chinese script has no way to
handle those grammatical endings.
In order to deal with this problem of grammar and to
increase literacy rates, the Korean alphabet, Han’gul, was created in
1443. The creation is credited to King
Sejong of the Joseon Dynasty. He said,
of the script he created, that it was simple enough for a smart man to learn in
ten minutes, and an unintelligent man could learn it in a week. The Han’gul alphabet is really easy to learn
and it has been around for a short enough time that spelling conventions still
match the actual sound of the words, making it that much simpler.
In South Korea today, Han’gul is everywhere, and it
doesn’t usually mix with the Hanja. It
is also easily identifiable amongst the other scripts of the region. The letters are organized into syllable
blocks that are read left to right and top to bottom. Han’gul is also the only
script in the region that contains ovals within those blocks. One thing to keep in mind when learning to
read this script as a non-native Korean speaker is that the sounds available in
Korean are different from others in the area, and much different from those
available in English. The
differentiations between sounds are different too, and the letters of the
alphabet reflect that. Below is a chart
depicting the basic consonant-vowel combinations available in Han’gul. If you have any questions, feel free to ask
in the comment section.