Who knows what Hangul is???

On 2002-10-10 18:09, Oso wrote:

\"Hangul is actually what Koreans refer to their written language. Thus, when non-native speakers go about learning Korean, or any Asian language, they must learn the spoken and the written forms. Many also feel to fully learn, one has to be exposed to both forms for better understanding. My husband started out teaching me the alphabet, before focusing on the spoken phrases. Unlike Japanese hiragana or Chinese characters, for instance, Hangul had been structured so that someone with simple education could read it.\"







Sorry, Oso, this does not make any sense!

Is Cyrillic \'what Russians refer to their written language\"?



Hangul is Korean alphabet, but Koreans actually use a mixed system of writing: some words which are originally borrowed from Chinese are written as Chinese characters and some, originally Korean words, are written in hangul. All gramatical endings, however, are written in hangul. A request to translate \"into hangul\" means that the outsourcer wants everything to be written in alphabet, without any Chinese characters, which is also perfectly correct in Korean.



The structure of this system of writing is actually very similar (if not the same) as in Japanese - the characters of hangul, hiragana and katakana, though, are entirely different. To make it more complicated - hiragana and katakana are not alphabets, hangul is.



Hope this helps.



Magda

(Korean Studies Graduate)





[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-10-10 22:32 ] ▲ Collapse