[KS] Indonesian tribe picks Korean alphabet as official writing system (kevin parks)

Michael Rank rank at mailbox.co.uk
Thu Aug 6 18:14:24 EDT 2009


This is fascinating, I passed it on to Victor Mair (China prof at U of  
Pennsylvania) who is an editor of the Langagelog website, who got quite  
excited about it and I have added a bit more info

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1641#comment-39520

Michael Rank

Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:15:15 +0900
From: kevin parks

Subject: [KS] Indonesian tribe picks Korean alphabet as official
	writing	system
To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Message-ID: <4A7AE572.5060104 at macosx.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed


http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2009/08/06/56/ 
0302000000AEN20090806001200315F.HTML


That is pretty interesting. But I could have swore there were other
instances in the past where other cultures attempted to adopt Han'gu(l /
Choso(n'gu(l as their written language only to have it be rejected, no?
I don't recall as it has been a long time since I read Kim-Renaud, Y-K.
(ed) 1997. The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure.

Anyway, this is a very interesting language development that *gasp* for
once doesn't involve romanizations.

I wonder what the fit will be like or if their language, like modern
South Korean will be filled with lots of "eu" and such to try to account
for combinations and phonemes not availble in Han'gu(l. I think of what
happens with such loans words such as stress ???? which is hard to spell
and sounds bad. I am quite curious to know what their language sounds
like and how this will work.


cheers,

kevin





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