[KS] the Korean language

J.Scott Burgeson jsburgeson at yahoo.com
Wed Apr 9 09:12:24 EDT 2003


--- jaynee <jayne at newdream.net> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am a second generation Korean-American who knows
> very little Korean.
> However, my parents and my older sister (who knows
> more Korean and has
> spent time in Korea) like to rattle off an
> interesting fact on occasion.
> They say Korean is the most scientific (spoken?)
> language in the world.  I
> ran a Google search and other Koreans say this on
> their personal website,
> but I do not know who else thinks this.  One website
> mentioned that it was
> supported by a German anthropologist, but it did not
> mention his name.  Do
> you know if this is true and if so, what was the
> anthropologist's
> name and title of study?
> 
> Sincerely,
> Jayne Jung
> 


All the linguists on this list are being silent here
on this question, so I am probably walking into a
minefield, but isn't that claim of "scientificness"
normally made in reference to Han'gul, the Korean
alphabet, not the language itself? Anyway, Han'gul may
or may not be the most scientific alphabet in the
world when it comes to expressing the indigenous
language for which it was created, but is decidedly
non-scientific and often merely approximate when it
comes to rendering many foreign words. As for the
Korean language itself being scientific, there are so
many homophones in it that it is often hard even for
educated Koreans to know what certain words actually
mean, or what their exact word root is (unless you
want to lug around a giant Chinese character
dictionary with you all the time and make educated
guesses about which sound refers to which Chinese
character, etc.) This does not really fit my own idea
of what "scientific" means, which normally suggests
precision and clarity of meaning...
   --Scott Bug


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