Korean Alphabet

 Blog #5: How Korea crafted a better alphabet

Korean (Hangul) vs Chinese:

Chinese Logographs and sound-meaning combination units one after another but Korean as elegant complex words with different pieces and endings which makes it difficult to fit chinese grammar into korean grammar. Hangul was created by the fourth king ‘Sejong the Great’ of the Joseon Dynasty. He had his scholars 'Hall of Worthies' create in 1444 “The Proper sounds for the Education of the People.” King Sejong explained the main need for the new script saying common folk or peasants did not have time to learn how to use Chinese characters

Korean Language:

Hangul is a featural alphabet where every syllable gets separated into its own block. The syllables consonants and vowels are written side by side within the block and each block would be shaped according to the features. Consonants (DATSORI) are based on shapes of the vocal organs ㄱ(g),ㅋ (k),ㄴ(n),ㅅ(s),ㅇ(ng),ㅁ(m), ㅍ(p),ㅂ (b) The final three are examples which are sounds made with the lips and by looking at the first two as well you can see if they have a similar sounds they have a similar shape. Korean was made to be straightforward and easy to learn even the Vowels had a yin and yang harmony that reflected the idea of sky, earth, and human ㆍ(Yang) , ㅡ (yin),  ㅣ(Neutral)

NativLang. "How Korea crafted a better alphabet - History of Writing Systems #11 (Featural Alphabet)." Youtube, uploaded by NativLang , 23rd of October 2015 of publication, https://youtu.be/j9hzK0K1L4I.