[KS] the Korean language--Scientific lexical ordering?

Lee JooBai jblee6952 at hotmail.com
Wed Apr 9 14:20:47 EDT 2003


Hi,

Scott Burgeson writes,

>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


I agree that the hangul as originally promulgated was
indeed a "scientific" achievement.  However,
what does puzzle me is the preeminence today of the
puzzling non-scientific lexical ordering that predominate
all the dictionaries and lists?

The original ordering of hangul in Hun.Min.Jung.Eum seems
to clearly show the received tradition of the phonetic
studies from India, and one which can be seen in the
Japanese lexical ordering and the Chinese bopomofo.

Is there some specific rhyme or reason to the current
lexical ordering? And who invented the current lexical
ordering?  Was there some specifically nationalistic
motive behind not restoring the Hun.Min.Jung.Eum lexical
ordering because of similarity to the kana lexical ordering?
And why is there no effort by the scholarly community in
Korea to share this useful knowledge with the public?

Even granting that the H.M.J.E. did not come to public light
after the war, it has already been half a century.

I can not understand that there is no greater effort to
restore or to explicate this most scientific, and useful,
lexical ordering found in H.M.J.E.  For surely the hangul
without the H.M.J.E. lexical ordering looses much
of its meaningfulness and scientificness.

Is it even possible that the Japanese trained korean linquists
were unaware of that earlier phonetic tradition or of its
institutionalization through the IPA?

And surely Koreans and students of Korean can benefit from
learning the basics of ablaut and consonantal alternations which
encapsulates much of diachronic and synchronic phonetics.

And if any country can benefit from an early childhood study of
phonetics, it is surely a small country like Korea situated as it
is between China and Japan geographically and culturally and
dependent on world trade for its survival.  And one can hardly
think of a better tool for teaching phonetics than hangul
and H.M.J.E. lexical ordering.

Regards,

JooBai Lee



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