07/10/2021
Korean Alphabet: A Brief History of Hangul (한글)
The history of Hangul; the language that defines Korea.
October 9 - the holiday of creating Korean Alphabet (한글). As you may know, our University is named after King Sejong who created the Korean alphabet (한글). That is why we would like to tell you more about it.
You may think all east Asian alphabets are created equal. They must all stem from the same ancient source. Think again. Korea’s official writing system, this Korean alphabet (한글), is one of the world’s youngest alphabets in the world.
How young is young? A shade over five hundred years (1446 CE). Considering that the Phonetician alphabet dates back three thousand years (1050 BCE), that’s pretty young.
Since its inception, kings, invaders, and the societal elites have tried and failed to suppress it. Its phonetic alphabet persisted through a brutal thirty-five-year occupation, where the Japanese attempted to destroy all things Korean.
Today Hangul helps define the identity of the proud people who call themselves han-gu-gins (한국인; Koreans).
Before the 15th century, the preferred writing system in Korea was Hanja (漢字). These were Chinese characters brought over from Buddhist and Chinese literature.
The Korean ruling class adapted Hanja to suit their needs. They used Hanja for their bureaucracies, literature. and official record-keeping.
Adapting Hanja
How did they adapt a foreign language writing system and use it for their own? Not easily.
Hanja and Chinese characters are logographic. Meaning, you can’t sound out the characters phonetically, as in Spanish, German, and English (sometimes).
Many Chinese characters derive from illustrations, like the Egyptian hieroglyphs. A brief sketch of a bird means bird. In this Chinese script, 山 means mountain.
Before the creation of Hangul, Koreans used Hanja in two ways. First, they used characters as is. Many of the elite could speak and write in Chinese.
However, the Korean language was created and existed parallel to Chinese. Koreans wanted to preserve their uniqueness. They weren’t Chinese. Their words sounded different.
So, the Korean elite decided to adapt Hanja characters o Korean phonetically.
If a Hanja symbol sounded like a Korean word, Koreans used the symbol to represent the Korean word.
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