From: hjkim@sol.UVic.CA (Hyong-Joong Kim)
Subject: Re: Korean writing system (Why question ?)
Organization: University of Victoria
Distribution: soc.culture.korean
Date:  5 Apr 92 20:24:24 GMT

In <1992Apr3.215035.5866@nntp.hut.fi> jtyrkko@vipunen.hut.fi (Juha-Petri Tyrkk|) writes:

>>>> In my point of view, Hangul is the most important and symbolic invention 
>>>> (development) in our history. <...>

 in Turkish was also King Se-Jong and his scholors' concern. 

>  One thing that relates my language, Finnish, to Hangul is that
>Finnish, too, has been improved purposefully. The first basis of
>written Finnish was created in a few years, because there was
>a need to translate the Bible to Finnish language, but there was
>no such thing as written Finnish. Besides the writing rules the
>translator also had to create a vast amount of new words for ideas
>that did not exist in Finnish those days.
After Yi-family's revolution (completed in 1392, which was bloodless),
they needed a tool to symbolize their legitimate government in the
peninsula.   Hangul seems succesful, whereas Jacobinites' calendar
after Fr. Revolution (1789): 9 days work and one day rest (IMHO, 
if it happens in N. America, then quite a few people collect their 
pension or whatever and will go to Montana or Colorado ranches to 
breed horses.  They will never come back to a screen of computer.-:))
was a failure.  Of course, the Bible translation played a significant
role in preserving the typological patterns of Korean in 19c.  

>  Finnish is written by European alphabet, ready-made for us, but
>we had to make our own ways and rules to use them, because it
>appeared that the first rules partly adopted from other languages
>did not work with Finnish.
Sure, ...  your Finnish does not belong to the Indo-European language
family.   Well, Estonians and Lapps are using Roman alphabets or cyllic
ones?   After the collapse of the Soviet Union, what happens to the
minor language groups (Uralic) in the north?

>  From the very first contact with Hangul I was delighted with
>its power of expression connected to its simplicity. I am willing
>to admit that for writing foreign (e.g. Finnish) words Hangul
>works better than other writing systems I know about (except for
>IPA symbols, but they are not a language). In that sense I might
>even call Hangul a superior, or at least cleverly created system.

>                                         Juha-Petri Tyrkko
Thanks a lot.  Although my native tongue is Korean, i am delighted
with Hangul's simplistic principle and clear logic too. 
However, I believe that Finnish follows phonetic transcription rather
than "Morphophonemic" one which is adopted in Korean.  In other words,
`the Yalu river'  /ap lok kang/ can be written /am no kkang/ in Finnish,
while Korean spelling sticks to the former shape which still retains the
meaning of each letter respectively.  Of course, Koreans say [amnok'a_ng_]
when they pronounce it. The point I'm driving at is how to transcribe
a word in a system.   Hence Roman spelling seems to be adopted after 
assimilation in Finnish (please let me know if i'm wronged).  

Anglo saxon, on the other hand, has been heavily influenced from the 
Continent thru (why -ough here?) a couple of invasions of Latin people. 
(Roman, middle age, Norman conquest 1066, Napoleon I, etc.)  Therefore, 
anglo saxon /nite/ (sp.  nyht, or neaht OE, the first /nyght/ is found
in 1422 according to OED) became /night/ following Latin spelling rules 
(maybe trying to be "cool", if i use street English ah?).

... Well, how many systems do we have for Romanization of Hangul?  
There are well-known three systems in Korea.  The first one is 
McCune-Reischauer system (they visited Korea when they were graduate
students via Japan, i believe); the second one is Korean Govmn't Ministry
of Education system; and the third one is Yale system (prof. Martin et al.).
Yes, if you invent a system, then that will be "John Doe = Hong Kil-Dong"
system.   That's why Romanization of Korean is so confusing, despite 
excluding N. Korean's nationalistic system. This will be a big issue in 
the near future after our reunification.  Finally, I would like to add 
one more thing here.  For instance, Finnish vowel harmony, not alone
Magyar VH, can be expressed vividly in Hangul rather than in English 
vowel system. It became a sum of piecemeal; however, i hope ...

hyong-joong kim. Univ. of Victoria, Can
p.s.: many ideas are from _Linguistic Expeditions_ by Ho-min Sohn (prof. at
U of Hawaii) pp74-90.  Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Co. 1986.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean