![]() The syllabic blocks of Hangul used to be written vertically, copying the prestige style of Chinese script, but now is written left-to-right – and even with western punctuation. A few combinations of these three elements account for all the vowel permutations possible in Korean.Īs mentioned above, it is an alphabet that is arranged in sequential syllables so the syllable 한 han might look like a standalone character, it is actually composed of three letters: ㅎ h, ㅏ a, and ㄴ n. #KOREAN LINGUIST CODE#Getting a character system to represent these many complex variations is a bit like enlisting Lionel Messi to regulate an entire country’s tax code – his skills just lie elsewhere.Īpart from the consonant set, the remaining symbols are vowel markers, which are composed of just three elements a horizontal line representing the flat Earth, the essence of yin a point representing the Sun, the essence of yang and a vertical line which represents an upright human, seen as the mediator between these two. Where Chinese is analytic, Korean is agglutinative, meaning that new words are formed by ‘gluing’ new elements onto old ones as prefixes and suffixes, and in turn that words can vary massively in length, often being very long. Hanja was, by the way, the most abysmal compromise possible for a language like Korean, which in one very important way is the diametric opposite of Chinese. Efforts to find a functional Romanization for Chinese have stumbled partially because Chinese has untold homophones, which can be distinguished by graphical characters, but less easily with phonemic symbols. #KOREAN LINGUIST FULL#Nevertheless, the film was less than a financial success, selling just over 2 million tickets.Now, a language borrowing the writing system of another one is a rather mundane occurrence English writing is a modification of Roman script, which is a modification of the Greek system, which in turn is descended from the Phoenician alphabet.īut it turns out that different writing systems are not all equally well equipped to capture the full range of a language’s grammar.Ī character system works relatively well for Chinese, because it is an analytic language, meaning that words tend to be very small and atomized, so a one-to-one relationship with an image can be established. But it was met with mostly favorable reviews from the public and the general audience alike, as they praised the chemistry between the two leads - Choi Min-sik and Han Suk-kyu, who played Jang and Sejong, respectively. #KOREAN LINGUIST MOVIE#Later in 2019, another movie about King Sejong hit the silver screen, titled “Forbidden Dream.” The film focuses on Sejong’s interest in science and technology, depicting an imaginary friendship between the king and a real historical figure, inventor Jang Yeong-sil.ĭirected by Hur Jin-ho, this film also took liberties with historical facts and depicted vulnerable aspects of the king. The film with a budget of 13 billion won ($9.3 million) failed to break even, garnering far less than the required 3.5 million ticket sales. The controversy struck the film hard at the box office. The movie depicts Shin Mi as playing a crucial role in making the Korean writing system, despite no historical records indicating so and the king explicitly saying he himself made the letters. “The King’s Letters,” however, has been criticized by some as a distortion of history. Rather than depicting Sejong as a powerful, ingenious ruler, the movie follows the struggles of a man and his cooperation with Buddhist monk Shin Mi, played by fellow respected Korean actor Park Hae-il. The film revolves around the 1446 promulgation of Hunminjeongeum - which was what Hangeul was originally called and the name of the book that explained how the system worked - consisting of 28 letters. ![]()
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