Bill Poser, over at Language Log, tells us that October 9 is Hangul Day (í•œê¸€ë‚ ) in Korea, celebrating the creation and promulgation of the Hangul alphabet by King Sejong the Great in 1446. Hangul is not an ideographic language like Chinese, in which every concept has its own ideograph, and pronounciation of a word is almost completely disassociated from the ideographs that represent the written form of the word; in Chinese, a given ideograph may have one pronounciation in Cantonese, a completely different pronounciation in Mandarin, and even be used, with the same meaning but with, again, totally different pronounciations, in classical Korean or Japanese—languages as different from Chinese as English is from Nepali.
Hangul, on the other hand, is an alphabetic writing system, in which just 28 letters represent, quite faithfully, logically and unambiguously, the spoken sounds of the Korean language. Prior to its invention by King Sejong, the very few literate Koreans—all members of the ruling elite—used Chinese ideographs to represent the written form of ideas. Hangul made it easy for any Korean to read and write the language.
Here is a translation of King Sejong’s opening paragraph of the document in which he introduced Hangul (that document, itself, was written in Chinese ideographs);
“The sounds of our country’s language are different from those of China and do not correspond to the sounds of Chinese characters. Therefore, among the stupid people, there have been many who, having something to put into writing, have in the end been unable to express their feelings. I have been distressed by this and have designed twenty-eight new letters, which I wish to have everyone practice at their ease and make convenient for their daily use.”
And here is Bill Poser’s comment on King Sejong’s document:
Nowadays that isn’t such a striking goal, but in his world it was remarkable. In 15th century Korea, as almost everywhere else in the world, literacy was restricted to a small elite - most people were illiterate. Furthermore, Korean society was extremely hierarchical. It consisted of three tiers, nobles, commoners, and slaves. It was almost impossible for a slave to become free, or for a commoner to become a noble. Until 1444, when King Sejong forbade the practice, a slave’s owner had the right to kill him at whim.
Not surprisingly, there was strong opposition from the nobles in King Sejong’s court, who presented him with a memorial of opposition to his new alphabet and who debated him about the wisdom of introducing it. Poser makes it clear that King Sejong’s accomplishment here was not simply a linguistic one:
For the king himself in such a society to create the means for mass literacy, knowing full well its liberating effect, is absolutely stunning. King Sejong was not merely a great scholar; he was a great humanitarian.
Poser’s article is extremely well written and well organized, full of all sorts of interesting things, without every getting too detailed or too technical. Read it and enjoy.
I wish you all a belated Happy Hangul Day!
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