From: phantom@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (James Choi)
Subject: Super-set system
Keywords: Korea, writing system
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 18:36:14 GMT

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

It seems like we are going through a cyclic argument.  To break this boring
cycle, I decided to use a "parallel" example.

Indian music has more than 12 tones at modern western music uses.  I think
it as 18 tones or so.  It may not be exact, but the Indian music scale can
represent pretty much every note on modern western music (this means every
single song you like).  Indeed, it is a superset.  If you are not
satisfied, then imagine a 24 tone scale.  This one IS a superset scale.
Except, the music played on that scale will not be pleasing to our ears and
we do not have a simple way to write such note on a music sheet.

Now, is it a superb music scale?  I would say no because I would not like
the music played on that scale (listening to citar music for an extended
period of time is tiring for me) and I DO NOT NEED that many notes.  All I
need is 12 tones per octave.  And I do not feel that this 12 tone
quantization is limiting my creative process.  Any writing system can
produce infinite number of distincitve words, just like 12 tones can
produce infinite number of music.  Of course, 24 tone scale can produce
infinite^2 (or is it infinite^12?) so number, but do you care?

Imagine a martian coming to the earth and bragging about their 24 tone
system which can completely play all the music we have and much much more.
Will we, the earthlings, be envious?  I for one will not care.  And while I
will admit that the 24 tone can produce infinite^12 variations, I will be
happy with just infinity.

In article <1992Apr7.170338.18687@m.cs.uiuc.edu> ywlee@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Youngwhan Lee) writes:
>As I said numberous times, a writing system is a tool. Human being's 
>ability is multidimensional. Why on earth one has to limit his/her 
>ability by using poor tool? Hangul was an attemp to encircle the sounds 
>existed in many other languages. Although many elements of the attempt
>have been extinct, it is still a superb writing system in representing
>sounds.

From my limited knowldege, I cannot think of new sound that was created in
Korean language in my lifetime due to its flexible writing system.  Can
someone provide an example of sound creation as a direct result of the
flexible writing system?  Writing foreign language sound does not count
because it is not a function of a writing system.  Any writing system can
approximate the foreign terms to a certain degree.  Besides, I remember
some purists pondering over the translation of term "computer".

I think the writing system follows the language, not the other way around.

>Of course not. This is why you want to distinguish writing systems from
>language. Hangul is and was a writing system and it is far better than
>many other. (I suppose I don't go over to repeat the reasons I enumerated
>in my other postings.)

It still sounds like that "better" 24 tone scale that can produce
infinte^12 number of music.

>>6.  Learning hangul may be easy at first.  But to become functionally
>>literate, it takes just as much effort as the other languages.  Learning to
>>prounce properly all the connected sounds (ex shin-ra is pronounced shilla)
>>takes a lot of time and practice.  And han-gul is cpu intensive at first.
>>By the time you get to be a fluent reader, you are recognizing the whole
>>letter, not each components.  At this stage, the reading mechanism is the
>>same as reading Japanese Kana or English words. (fluent reader reads each
>>word,not each letter in the word).
>
>Right. Learning language takes time. I think Korean language is 
>particularly difficult. But we are discussing about Hangul, the writing 
>system. 

I was talking about the writing system.

>>8.  I never wished a foreign language used hangul as its writing system.  I
>>feel each language is best represented with its writign system.  I learned
>>a few foreign language.  I never wrote pronounciation key in hangul.  Even
>>Japanese, which has subset of Korean sound according to some people, is
>>much harder to understand when its sound is written out in hangul.  
>
>Maybe is it because you are not used to Japanese written in Hangul?

The same can be said about any language written in any writing system.  And
in the case of Japanese written in Korean, it just does not sound right.
Hangul does not have 'ts', 'z', and 'f' sound. (of 10 or so distinctive
Japanese consonants, 3 are missing.  by no means hangul is a superset) And
all vowels are slightly different from Japanese counterpart.

>youngwhan.

p.s.  someone mentioned "copu" as an example of Japanese writing system's
limitation.  This particular example is wrong one because "copu" came from
Portuguese word "copo" which sounds just like "copu".  Contrary to the
popular belief, not all foreign words are from English.  And who cares how
close the original word it sounds likes, as long as the users understand
each other.  If you want to communicate with the outsiders, then learn
their language.  You won't go far with your own writing system alone, even
if it is hangul.



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