The Science Behind Language

By Celina Yang

Quite recently, I have learned the full process of how Korean, as in the writing known as “Hangul” was formed. Throughout my whole 16 years of living as a Korean, I never really learned about how my first language was formed. Unlike many languages that got developed by many people over the centuries, Hangul can be clearly said to be formed by one great king. His name was King Sejong the Great, and he was the 4th king of the Joseon (or the Chosun as my history book says) dynasty, which was created by General Yi, not the one who made the turtle ships, but the one who came back the Seoul as the troops were moving to defend themselves from the Japanese troops to conquer and make a dynasty in Seoul which came to be known as the Choson dynasty.

The Full Process

Before the creation of Hangul, many Koreans were forced to use Chinese characters in the Joseon dynasty, but due to the large number of complex characters and the lack of education. Most of the lower class did not know how to read or write, only higher class people were able to learn the characters and read. However, King Sejong, who was able to read and read very much himself, believing that literacy would greatly increase the wealth and the economy in the dynasty. So to help his citizens find correct methods of farming, he first made a book of pictures that showed when to harvest or when to seed. This was pretty successful, still it did not give a great impact due to the ambiguity of the pictures. Therefore, he started a project to create an alphabet for the citizens to understand and write. Some sources say that he gathered a group of scholars called the Hall of Worthies to create the language, but many sources prove that he himself invented Hangul. Hangul was designed so that people with little to no education could learn to read and write easily. That many described the languag using the saying, "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.” The document Hunminjeongeum became the foundation of Hangul. And the day it was published which was October 9th became known as Hangul day.

The Impact

At first, many scholars and higher class people disapprove of Hangul, due to believing that if lower classes started reading they would lose their superiority. However, Hangul really impacted the lower class greatly positively. This really started the era of innovation such as movable types, water and sun clocks. The language allowed ordinary citizens to read and write without any education at all. And allowed many women to write literature when before they could not read or write due to not having an education.Still, I was really surprised that Spanish was so hard to learn because I learned to write korean in like a week. Which may be because I am korean, but still, I learned it very fast, much faster than English which I am fluent in. Knowing only 24 characters we can read and write every word in the Korean and also English language.

https://medium.com/@caveheraa/the-case-for-hangul-as-the-worlds-easiest-writing-system-7287d44d325b

https://www.usnews.com/education/learn-korean-guide

https://www.livescience.com/55607-whats-the-fastest-language-for-texting.html

https://blog.naver.com/pys-esq/222111517287