From: phantom@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (James Choi)
Subject: Re: Super-set system
Keywords: Korea, writing system
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 02:04:13 GMT

My reply to youngwhan's posting is included at the end of this.

In article <1992Apr9.205403.30706@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> js92@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Jungshik  Shin) writes:
>   But, there is certainly a larger room for 
>   deviation from that convention which may be tried by some bold 
>   and creative writters in Hangul and other writting system with 
>   huge number of sounds to be represented than in those with smaller number
>   of sounds to be expressed.

I am yet to hear ONE example of newly created sound thanks to the writing
system.  It seems to me this large number of possibility adds to the
spelling difficulty in han-gul.  How many of you can confidently spell
"dish washing" (sulgeoji)?

It seems to me the only advantage of all those potential is expressing
someone else's language.  I am dismissing that advantage on the ground that
it never sounds right, and no matter how demented it sounds due to the
limitation of the writing system, it served its purpose to its full extent
because people COMMUNICATE.

>   Sure, it has something to do with writting system. You cannot
>seperate writting system from language. Writting system is a important
>ingredient of language. 

Yes you can easily separate the language and the writing system.  Koreans
have difficulty seperating the writing sytem and the language.  (For that
matter they have difficulty separating nationality and the race.)  All
languages existed live and well before any kind of writing system came
along.  You can substitute writing system and still keep the language.  In
fact, hundreds years of Chinese language (words) and writing system did not
shake the Korean language (which did not even have writing system) at its
root.

>   Sure it existed before Hangul. But, modern civilization is largely
>   based on printed material and without writting system to represent
>   those rich expression as closely to what they pronounce in SPOKEN 
>   Korean    as closely as possible, 'WRITTEN' Korean would be  duller
> than now and it would feed back this effect to SPOKEN Korean and
> Korean altoghether would become dull.

I think any language's writing system is capable of representing all of its
sounds.  What kind of idiotic people would adopt or invent writing sytem
that cannot express their own language?  You can rest assured that no
language on this earth would be made DULL by its own writing system.

>   Please read my message in context of limitation which may be
>   imposed by KSC 5610(with fixed number of syllables) on the
>   creativity of the young. Assume they like to express some feeling
>with syllables they can pronounce but are not able to type in computer
>screen.  How much would they be frustrated?   

I think I did not understand what you meant.  I have very limited
experience with hangul word processors.  Could you give me an example of
the syllables that are not allowed in this new scheme?

>   I'm not saying that Hangul is better because it has the expression
>   for animal sound or color. Of course, any language has its own way
>   to express those sounds. Who does not know that simple fact? I'm
>   not so fool that I don't know that.

:)  :)

My final word on this can be summarized to this.

I KNOW hangul can express many different sounds.  It is the first writing
system I learned.  When I learned hangul, I was taught how great it is.
Along with it, also I learned how the other systems sucked.  Now that I
learned those "other" writing systems, I found that they are beautiful on
their own way.  Besides, all those reasons why they "sucked" were
irrelevant because they were not meant to represent Korean language's
sound.  And also, at the time I did not learn what sound hangul cannot
represent and found out later there are plenty of it.  I felt cheated, and
I was upset that all that indoctrination actually retarded my appreciation
of other writing systems.

Everything Mr. Hungshik Shin and Mr. Youngwhan Lee say is true.  And I
agree on their technical merit.  The question comes down to, as Mr. Andy T.
Kim pointed out, "do you care"?  I do not care, and most of you seem to care
although no one produced any evidence on what to do with all those
potential possiblities other than representing foreign words a little
closer.

James Choi, not a member of any worthwhile organization including but not
limited to IEEE.