[KS] Writing in Blocks
Blazej Bienias
bieniasb at go2.pl
Tue May 20 05:13:59 EDT 2003
CHIRKOV D S wrote:
> In short: a Korean syllable ‘block’ of is more efficient and conveys
> more linguistic data than any Roman letter.
I highly admire Hangeul as a writing script, but I think the version is
used right now is most suitable for Korean language. If one one wishes
to write syllables like CCV or even CCCV in nowadays Hangeul, she/he has
has to use several blocks of Hangeul, the same problem is with a
diphthong "ai" pronouced like English letter "I" which needs two blocks
while it is really only one syllable. I heard sometime ago that we could
use some kind of "expanded Hangeul" which was described in
HunMinJeongEum which would allow us to write like any sound utterable by
a man.
One more thing worth mentioning is that Middle Korean which was spoken
around King Sejong times was a tonal language and originally Hangeul
also carried the information about tones.
It was made using dots on the left side of syllable blocks.
No dot meant that the Hangeul syllable had a low tone. One dot to the
left of the Hangeul syllable indicated the high tone. For the rising
tone, two dots on the left of the Hangeul syllable is marked.
I think that taking this into consideration could make Hangeul even more
powerful and useful writing system.
Blazej Bienias (Wroclaw, Poland)
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