Languages & Cultures of East Asia

Trad 101, Sections 18-19-20-21   Fall 2000

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Lecture Outline, 9/13/00 - Korean Writing System

Review
JPN word-processing
Korean
     Example
     History
     How it works

Review

     Writing systems in Japanese

	Kanji (Chinese characters)		'rain'
	Hiragana
	Katakana
	The Roman alphabet	ame

     How do you use them?

               Kanji = content words
               Hiragana = inflectional endings and particles
               Katakana = foreign words (except for Chinese)

JPN word-processing

Reform?
     Difficult to learn/use
          Three different systems plus the Roman alphabet
          Multiple readings of Kanji

     Abolishing Kanji?
     Romanizing everything?

     Homonyms (borrowed many words from Chinese)
     Very high literacy rate (99%)
     Part of the culture

     Limit the number of Kanji (approx. 2000)

Korean

     Example (overhead)
          Vertical and horizontal
          Space between words
          North Korea - The Korean alphabet (Hankul)
          South Korea - Chinese characters (1700-1800) and Hangul

     History

          By the early centuries of the Christian era
               Chinese writing had been imported

          1443, Hankul was created (King Sejong)

               Why?

               Korean (taken from Handbook for Teaching
               Korean-American Students 1992:68)

               Chinese characters weren't appropriate for Korean
               For common people

     How it works

	Each symbol = syllable
	Each part of the symbol = sound

          syllabic (and alphabetic)

          Symbols are based on the shape of the speech organ (overhead)

          Very logical
          Easy to learn/use (a small number of symbols, like in English)