Hankul

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A. Also spelled Han'gul, Hankul (Great Script) is the indigenous alphabet of the Korean Peninsula. (For you completists out there it's also called Onmun, or Vernacular Script.)

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Q. But aren't all Far Eastern languages written in adapted Chinese characters

A. Obviously not, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this article. A number of countries have never employed Chinese characters, preferring to use alphabets derived from Indian sources - such as Tibet and Thailand - which in turn have their roots in the Middle East. Some countries, notably the Philippines and Vietnam, use modified Latin scripts.

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However, as with all countries in the region, Korea was heavily influenced by China in all aspects of its religion, culture and language, and there are still many thousands of Chinese loan words in everyday use in Korean. In fact, for over 800 years, from about the 6th century AD, modified Chinese characters were indeed the exclusive medium for writing Korean, as they still are in Japan.

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Q. What makes Hankul unique

A. The fact that it was developed in Korea to write a single language and not a development of an earlier system. It is so effective that the British philologist Geoffrey Sampson has said of it: 'Han'gul must unquestionably rank as one of the great intellectual achievements of humankind.'

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Q. So, how come Korea's different

A. The development of the Hankul alphabet is traditionally ascribed to Sejong (1397-1450), the foresighted fourth king of the Yi dynasty. He decided that Koreans needed their own writing system to replace the complicated Chinese system. So, during his reign, which began in 1418, a committee developed a scientific and straightforward phonetic alphabet from scratch, which was made the official alphabet during the 1440s. Consequently literacy rates soared as the alphabet caught on.

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Because of the continued influence of Confucianism and of Chinese culture, however, Hankul was not used by scholars or Koreans of the upper classes until after 1945, when Korea achieved independence from Japan. You still see Chinese symbols mixed with Hankul in the occasional newspaper headline and in highbrow literature, however, though this is considered somewhat pretentious.

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Q. Is the alphabet similar to ours then

A. In the sense that it has symbols representing consonants and vowels, yes. It consists of 24 letters, including 14 consonant and 10 vowel symbols. Where it differs is that the consonants represent groups of sounds rather than just a single one as in our alphabet. This is similar to the way that Pitman shorthand was developed in the 19th century.

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In Hankul, vowels are represented by long horizontal or vertical lines distinguished by small marks, while consonants are represented by two-dimensional signs that suggest the way your mouth and tongue are working when you make a sound. So, for example, you have pairs of lines representing lips together, tongue touching the roof of the mouth or an open throat. The consonants are formed with curved or angled lines, while vowels are composed of vertical or horizontal straight lines together with short lines on either side of the main line.

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Q. Any elements we Latin-script readers would recognise

A. Hankul is written left-to-right then top-to-bottom, just like the Latin, Greek and Indian alphabets.

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Q. Is it used in both North and South Korea

A. It is. All 72 million Koreans use it with very slight orthographic differences between the two countries. It's known as Choson Muntcha in North Korea.

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See also the answerbank articles on shorthand, the Latin alphabet and language isolates

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For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

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By Simon Smith