Talk:Hangul

If you want to know the Korean name of something or somebody, please ask at the notice board's “Korean name needed” section or try a dictionary.

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GA

See previous discussion Talk:Hangul/Archive_1#GA

It's spelled Hangeul

See previous discussion Talk:Hangul/Archive_1#It's spelled Hangeul.

No, it's not. The English name is Hangul. Take Moscow, for example. In Russian, the city is called Москва. The official Russian romanization rules give us Moskva. But in English we call it Moscow, and that is why the English wikipedia article is called Moscow. Same for Hangul... in Korean it's called 한글, the official Korean romanization rules give us "Han'gŭl" or "Hangeul", but in English we call it Hangul, and that is why the English wikipedia article is called Hangul. I think the best thing to do here is to leave is as Hangul, and use the name Hangul all the way through, but add all other versions as redirections and also have a section inside the article explaining the other versions of the name. Azylber (talk) 23:00, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

straw poll

Move to hangeul		Keep at Hangul
6		7

I'm starting to think Tahon is right. French and German wikipedia have converted to hangeul, and languages which have the means (Polish, Turkish, Russian - but not Vietnamese!) distinguish the second vowel from u. The misspelling can be confusing. This is not an entrenched English word - certainly nowhere near as entrenched as Peking was before switching to Pinyin - so I don't think that's much of an excuse to keep the pseudo-Wade Giles orthography. The OED citations only treat 'hangul' as an unassimilated foreign word. True, Google hits (if restricted to English) are 6:1 in favor of 'hangul' over 'hangeul', but I'm not sure that should be a deciding factor. All in favor of moving the page to hangeul vs. keeping it here? kwami (talk) 22:34, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep at "Hangul". Widely used pre-existing romanization. Badagnani (talk) 22:37, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

• Change to "Hangeul". See the discussion above: It's Spelled Hangeul/Say Hageul [han gl], not hangul [hang gool]/Hanguel is right and hangul is wrong. Do not keep the wrong.--Tahon (talk) 01:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• Follow the official, follow the official. Hanguel is the official romanization of Korean. Spelling mistakes for an article's title is humiliating and we should all be ashamed by it. Chang it now if you don't want anyone laughing at us please. Hangul will be 한굴 in Korean, but Hangeul will be 한글, thus Hangeul is correct. Please follow the official and correct term whether the majority also follows it or not. Once again, I strongly suggest this article is changed back to Hangeul. Xia xia. Veritasian (talk) 03:07, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Change to "Hangeul" Just seems to be the proper Romanization... Typing "Hangul" seems awkward when it's pronounced "Hangeul", not "Hangooool"... Dekkappai (talk) 03:39, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep at Hangul per WP:NAMING and WP:UE — The common English spelling is "Hangul", per Merriam-Webster, American Heritage Dictionary, and Encyclopaedia Britannica. (The official romanization can, and should, be corrected inside the language box, where romanizations go.)--Endroit (talk) 04:01, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Move to Hangeul and of course leave behind a redirect under the old romanization. -- Dominus (talk) 14:55, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep at Hangul already known as the spelling --Appletrees (talk) 17:10, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• Keep at Hangul. Hangul is the most commonly used English name and should be preferred to a correct romanization/transliteration as per WP:ENGLISH. --Kusunose (talk) 07:01, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

After nearly two weeks, the vote is nearly evenly divided. Looks like we're sticking with the current spelling. kwami (talk) 07:36, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

'"'Move to Hangeul'Bold text"' because it is the official romanization. It is the official and correct term. Manhwagirl (talk) 02:36, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep at Hangul. In English it's called Hangul, so it doesn't matter what the romanization of the original word is. Azylber (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment Though the subject seems to be at rest now, I'd like to put in a thought. The "Standard English spelling" argument makes sense to me, and had me considering changing my vote to "Keep". However, with this debate in mind, I began noticing the presence of many articles with non-standard English characters-- Shōchū and Karel Čapek for example. How can these be considered "Standard English spellings" when they use characters not even on our keyboard? How can it be considered appropriate to use non-standard English characters to accomodate non-English alphabets in these cases, while the mere inclusion of a perfectly English-standard "e" in hangeul to represent a Korean word is not? I don't get very worked up over either "hangul" or "hangeul", but the application of the "Standard English spelling" rule seems inconsistent. Dekkappai (talk) 21:27, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I didn't agree with the WikiProject Japan's blanket addition of macrons to titles, as in most cases the standard English spelling doesn't use them. For Eastern European composers such as Antonín Dvořák, the spelling with diacritics really is the standard English spelling. Badagnani (talk) 21:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

OK-- Thanks for the feedback. If Japanese lost the macrons, I'd be fully pro-hangul. I'm still not convinced that Antonín Dvořák is standard English when 99.999999% of the searches on the composer on English Wiki are going to be redirected from "Antonin Dvorak" (note the American "Dvoraks", such as Ann). But it's not that big a deal. Just wondering... Dekkappai (talk) 21:45, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I've never seen Dvořák's name spelled in a book or encyclopedia as "Dvorak." Similarly, Béla Bartók's name is always spelled with the diacritics. But Tokyo is spelled without macrons (though it "should" have them). There's no hard and fast rule between languages, I'm afraid. Badagnani (talk) 21:47, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Tokyo is anglicized (it has three syllables). Rather like Beijing, where the j is pronounced [ʒ], as if it were French. Hang(e)ul isn't that assimilated. kwami (talk) 05:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I missed this discussion! I agree that four years hence the situation regarding hangul has changed some; however, I do not think there is enough evidence to support the claim that hangeul is now the accepted English spelling. Maybe in four more years. I disagree with most of points given by Tahon. In particular, the I think the pronunciation described by 'hahng-gool' is not really how the word is pronounced in English: it is usually pronounced with one of the other "u" sounds: as 'hahng-gull' (rhymes with full). The [ʊ] sound is indeed the closest English sound to Korean [ɨ] (which is anyway pronounced with slightly compressed lips, making it more like [ʊ] than canonical IPA [ɨ]). Anyhow, my vote is keep. Nohat (talk) 09:29, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Keep as it is; leave it at Hangul. "Hangul" is an certificated English spelling, although 한글 is romanized as Hangeul according to the RRoK. --­ (talk) 23:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Just a note to follow up: a Google search now has 858k pages hangul, with no other spelling, 137k pages hangeul and another 5k han-geul, and 6k hankul. However, when pages are not excluded for having multiple spellings, the weight shifts: 904k hangul, 1090k hangeul—plus another 6k han-geul. kwami (talk) 10:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

• And Google Books has the following:

• Hangul = 1,031
• Hangeul = 507

Badagnani (talk) 10:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

563 with han-geul. But goes up to 568 if hangul is excluded? Something's wrong. Hangul only drops to 1027 with hangeul excluded. kwami (talk) 11:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Move to hangeul. - Gilgamesh (talk) 17:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I've avoided specialized IPA symbols and have included approximate English sounds so that any careful reader can follow my discussion below.

When the French first came to Korea, they spelled Korean words to represent the closest sounds in the French language, according to the spellings used in French. So for example, in almost any other language "eu" would be two vowel sounds: [e] followed by [u] (roughly rhymes with "say who"), but in French this is a single sound, roughly like "book" in English (contrast with "boot"). So the French rendering of the Korean capital city "Seoul" is a little unusual, and violates basic conventions of international spellings of languages with non-Roman alphabets. Most English speakers don't realize that "Seoul" is a two-syllable word (Se-oul). The French pronounced the first syllable "se" (rhymes with "je" as in "je m'appelle [name]"), which was the closest sound they had to the Korean so (in English, roughly between the vowel in the word "son" and the first syllable of "August"). The vowel in the second syllable ("oul") was written "ou." (Remember that in French, "u" is a different sound, a high vowel with rounded lips.)

The Koreans assumed that since [u] was the vowel in the second syllable, the second syllable was being written "ul," and so the rest ("seo") must be the first syllable.

Summary: The French wrote "Seoul" (Se-oul) but the Koreans thought it was Seo-ul, so this common vowel should be written "eo". This MISTAKE became part of the official Ministry of Education system, in spite of the fact that no language anywhere in the world now or in the known past (with the possible exception of a spelling in Middle English) used "eo" for anything close to this vowel. There was a great deal of criticism, ridicule, and even an empirical study published in a top professional journal showing the inferiority of the Ministry of Education system by a wide margin. This system did not find favor anywhere outside of those the article described as "linguistically naive Koreans" - not with linguists, not with publishers of books on Korean topics in other languages, not with foreign residents living in Korea, etc. At first, it was not enough to make the obvious point that a Romanization system for Korean (or any language) is primarily for the sake of people who can't read the native script. The Ministry of Education seemed to want to keep their own system because of some combination of ignorance of linguistics and pride in a system they could call their own. Not long after the empirical study was published, the (perhaps embarrassed) Korean government finally in 1984 scrapped the Ministry of Education system in favor of the system that was used almost universally elsewhere in the world (among languages using the Roman alphabet), the McCune-Reischauer system. (A notable exception was Martin's "Yale" system for specialized linguistic studies.) The Korean government adopted a modified version of the McCune-Reischauer system - with, for example, Cho's hacek (optionally) rather than the breve. Unfortunately, a decision a few years ago by the Korean government revived the widely reviled Ministry of Education system with some modifications (but preserving the mistaken "eo" spelling, as well as other poor choices such as the French "eu" spelling) under the name "Revised Romanization".

Wikipedia editors need to get a little more information on topics about which they make decisions rather than just talking too much among themselves. One Wikipedia editor pointed out with pride that Wikipedia was one of the only places (besides those under the authority of the Korean government) that has adopted Revised Romanization (RR) system. It didn't occur to this RR supporter that there might be a good reason. Contrast this with pinyin for Chinese, which was immediately and pretty universally adopted.

Keep "Hangul" spelling and treat the McCune-Reischauer system with at least as much respect as the inferior RR system, allowing it to have at least equal status on the English Wikipedia (we do this already for British and American English). -DoctorW 19:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Inferiority is subjective. It was my understanding the French origin of se-oul was not misunderstood, but that eo has turned into a logical back unrounded phonetic counterpart to back rounded o in a similar way e is a logical front unrounded phonetic counterpart to front rounded oe (even though eo e and o oe are not in the same vowel harmony group). I for one have gotten quite used to the Revised Romanization system, it being the first actual Korean romanization system I learned, and I use it extensively as the default romanization, with McCune-Reischauer (while I also know it) becoming increasingly obsolete and antiquated (if not yet useless). It's now become very hard not to think first of spellings like Baekje, Goguryeo, Incheon, Jejudo, Silla, Ulleungdo. Whereas Paekche, Koguryŏ, Inchʻŏn, Chejudo, Shilla and Ullŭngdo seem rather counterintuitive to me. In McCune-Reischauer, some of the specially-spelt vowels are digraphs (ae oe) while some are monographs (ŏ ŭ), when it would seem more logical not to mix them in the same spelling system. Also, it is my understanding (is it not?) that consonants such as initial [k] and non-initial [ɡ] are more or less allophones, whereas [k] and [k͈] are not, while the latter are both spelt k in McCune-Reischauer. Granted—they merge to allophones directly after an unreleased stop, but after a vowel they are not allophones (tʻaekwŏndo = [tʰɛk͈wʌndo]). I'm not saying Revised Romanization is totally perfect (the above example in RR is taegwondo because it's actually written 태권도, though the pronunciation would more indicate 태꿘도), but now makes far more intuitive sense than McCune-Reischauer, and I use Revised Romanization as the default in all Wikipedia mentions. It's been years, and Revised Romanization feels deeply-ingrained now. - Gilgamesh (talk) 14:47, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

• I'm abstaining from making an explicit vote since I don't want to see this poll opened again. But in response to the above comments.... First of all, DoctorW is correct in pointing out that Revised Romanization is inaccurate (some Korean linguists refer to it as "unhelpful"—for example, 것 kes in RR is pronounced more like [gʌt¬]　(pardon my funky diacritics, I'm at a computer which doesn't have all the fonts installed...that g is supposed to be voiceless, and the t unreleased)), although the linguistic accuracy of a spelling isn't really what's at issue here. The main thing is to have the article title under the name by which it is most commonly known to readers of this WP project—in other words, mostly English speakers, many Westerners, and certainly not mostly Korean people. As far as I know, in most of the Western literature on Korean linguistics and orthography, "Hangul" is used more commonly than "Hangeul" (I'd have to stop by the library sometime to give you specific names and book titles). If Hangul is the more common term amount our readers, then it's where the article should be located. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:27, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
  • It's not kes—you're thinking Yale Romanization. It's geot as its own word, or geos- as a word construct before a vowel. - Gilgamesh (talk) 14:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

• As a non-Korean-speaker/learner, hangeul looks weird to me. Yes, I know it’s “correct,” I’m aware the second vowel is more complicated than that, but that’s easily how I'm more used to seeing it. Also, knowing it represents a single syllable, it’s hard to remember whether it’s supposed to be eu or ue (eww, wait; hanguel looks even weirder).

So, as pointed out in previous conversations, we’re really dealing with the English word hangul here, not just romanized Korean. Which is why I wandered over to the talk page in the first place; it’s only due to its normalized status that I guess it’s not POV to “take sides” having the article live here, slighting Chosongul. —Wiki Wikardo 19:02, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

• Move to hangeul - In my opinion, It personaly does not matter to me of how people use and write it. What matters to me is that Wikipedia does not use the CORRECT romanization of the word. I'm Korean, and I know that Korea's Government has officialy declared "hanguel" as correct romanization. Sure, it does not stop anyone from using previous romanization. But, Wikiapedia is official site right? shouldn't we/they/us keep up with what is happening around the world? Wikiapedia is for finding official informations, not how people want it to be.

• Though I personally favour the "Hangul" spelling, knowing that this really is only an issue of redirects be put in place, I say Move to hangeul. We had a similar issue with Ojibwe, where the question was to consolidate everything to "Ojibwa" or "Ojibway" or "Chippewa" but as this was only an issue of redirects, we chose the spelling used by in communities. Same can be said for this article. CJLippert (talk) 14:56, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

• Move to Hangeul - 한글 is used only by the Republic of Korea (usually known as South Korea), and it is written as "Hangeul" in the current Romanization and "Hangul" is not recognized as exception. There is no reason to keep hangul. --Yes0song (talk) 09:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

• Keep Hangul (is this poll even open anymore?) Some things in Korea have kept their old spelling (call it simplified-McCune-R, I don't know) such as Pusan University. Note that Haansoft still uses the old spelling to name their word processor and EBS, too: http://timescampus.ebse.co.kr/kids_ebs.htm?NID=124&code=ebs_special - also, major English dictionaries use the old spelling. Many words enter the English language with odd spellings and it takes a mammoth effort to move them... Other romanized spelling changes such as Pinyin have the weight of the international linguistic community behind them. Wikipedia is supposed to rely on 'reliable sources' and not be a source itself. Darkpoet (talk) 06:15, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

• Leave it alone - hangul - To be honest, the Romanization of many Korean words is confusing. Adding "e" does not help a native English speaker very much in all the cases where it is used to modify a vowel sound, and may result in "han-Jul" or "han-gee-ul" pronunciation (I've heard these versions from beginners...) It comes up with "Seoul" too, I hear "See-ol" a lot but not the 서울 "So (as in "soft")-ool" that the "e" is trying to capture. I see it Romanized to "hangul" all over Korea. If they like it that way, maybe we should too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 제이5 (talk • contribs) 08:32, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Orthography section

I've deleted it mainly because its all made up nonsense. Its also littered with stuff about the Japanese which have zero to do with anything Korean. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Inincognito (talk • contribs) 04:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so this orthagraphy section's example has been around since before wikipedia, and I gather while here it has been challenged many times based on the comment in the code. Nonetheless, the negative connotations (which inject a defeatist attitude subconsciously to those trying to learn Hangul) of the sample make it non NPOV, in my opinion. I welcome discussion on and don't want to go by myself here especially since I just came across this article/it isn't my topic per se, but unless someone objects I am going to request an not-NPOV warning on the article until the example text can be changed. — robbiemuffin ^{page talk} 15:36, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Hangul and unsourced material on it

Why is there so much unsourced information on this page?

Before I edited it, there were 11 paragraphs in the history section. 4 of them have citations. 3 of them have citations that either 1. dont go anywhere, 2. some unreliable source.

In the orthography section,

that entire section has zero sources, most of the stuff i've never heard of it.

This section needs alot of improvements as there are too much Japanese and Chinese propaganda.Inincognito (talk) 04:29, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

_{For the record, Inincognito (talk · contribs) has been infinitely blocked for his abusive sockpuppetry.--Appletrees (talk) 13:46, 24 February 2008 (UTC)}

You can add {{fact}} tags to things you believe need referencing. However, the fact that you've never heard of something doesn't mean much. There have been dozens of editors of this article who have heard of them. If you believe something is propaganda, then point it out. Deleting material you don't agree with or have never heard of without discussion will only get you blocked. kwami (talk) 06:30, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Without citations that means nothing. Everyone has heard one thing or another. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.129.142.154 (talk) 17:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Misleading unsourced paragraph

Since regaining independence from Japan in 1945, the Koreas have used Hangul or mixed Hangul as their sole official writing system, with ever-decreasing use of hanja. Since the 1950s, it has become uncommon to find hanja in commercial or unofficial writing in the South, with some South Korean newspaper only using hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms. There has been widespread debate as to the future of Hanja in South Korea. North Korea reinstated Hangul as its exclusive writing system in 1949, and banned the use of Hanja completely.

This paragraph implies Hangul was never used. It has been used since the migration of mongols into modern day Korea. Spoken Hangul has existed for a long time, while written Hangul has been around since the 15th century.

There has been no widespread debate and there is no citation to support this claim. Hanja is still used for the same purposes as it always was. It has become obsolete because of the influx of western science and tech.

Contrary to popular belief there are not that many Hanja words. You could not form a coherent language based on Hanja and nearly impossible to write a sentence in. Hanja has been historically been used for buddhist and confucius texts written in Chinese as well as science that was transmitted through China. Some words for example computer does not exist in Korean. This is where hanja steps in.

North Korea did not exist prior to the Korean war, this is not a reinstated language, its a declaration of the official language like any other nation. The way it is worded is misleading to viewers of this article. Furthermore Hanja has not been banned in North Korea and there are no citations to proof this claim. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.13.18 (talk) 01:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that English is not your native language and that you have read a faulty translation of that paragraph. (Please forgive me if I'm wrong about that. I mean no offense.) That paragraph only describes events beginning in 1945. It does not describe events before 1945. So, it does not deny that Hangul was used since the 15th century. In English, "Hangul" denotes the written script (한글). "Hangul" does not denote the spoken Korean language (한국어). The last sentence of the paragraph does not say that North Korea existed before the Korean war. It does not say that North Korea changed its spoken language in 1949. You are correct that it needs a citation, but its claim (that Kim Il-sung declared Hangul as the official script of North Korea in 1949) does not seems controversial. Do you disagree with that claim? Do you have any suggestions about how to reword the paragraph so that it's easier to understand? Rod (A. Smith) 22:38, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

No you're right its not but I did not misread the paragraph.

"North Korea reinstated Hangul as its exclusive writing system in 1949"

It's biased and slightly anti-Korean with injections of pro-Chinese propaganda(lack of a better word). The word reinstated implies something different was there before. North Korea never existed previously, so there is no such thing as a reinstatement. Hangul has always been the exclusive writing system of Korea.

There is too much unsourced biased material in this paragraph among other things in this section.

"Since the 1950s, it has become uncommon to find hanja in commercial or unofficial writing in the South, with some South Korean newspaper only using hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms"

Its hard to prove when and to what degree that something was not used but I'll use these two examples, Hanseong sunbo & Dongnip Sinmun. One was published in the 1880's and the other in the 1890's. None of the newspapers have any sort of hanja. Those two were one of the first "modern newspapers" in Korea. Above the mentioned paragraph, there is also a reference to Korean poetry and books. 1950's was not the end of Hanja, its use has never been big unlike Japanese counterparts where Kanji is used heavily. This little excerpt has no citations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.238.13.18 (talk) 07:56, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

WRONG, it was reinstated because the japs ruled you and banned it.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.155.145.7 (talk) 04:41, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Parent Systems

Wikipedia is not a place for original research and controversial theories. There are no hard evidences that Hangul's 'ancestors' are all those other alphabet systems.

Agnistus, the article Phoenician_alphabet does NOT say hangul is derived from phagspa script. Please do not lie. It currently says: "Many historians believe that the Brahmi script and the subsequent Indic alphabets are derived from this script as well, which would make it and ultimately Egyptian the ancestor of most writing systems in use today, possibly including even Hangul, which may have been influenced by Brahmic Phagspa. This would mean that of all the national scripts in use in the world today, only the Chinese script and its derivatives have an independent origin."

"... POSSIBLY including even Hanul, which MAY have been INFLUENCED..." I have highlighted the key words for you.

kwami, you left a note on my page saying: "Agnistus didn't mean that "Korean is based on all those alphabets", but that that is its genealogy. Controversial, but there is substantial evidence."

Genealogy is just a scientific word used to say "based on". You said yourself that it is controversial, so why include it in wikipedia?

If you guys feel intent on including something in the article about the REMOTE POSSIBILITY that Hangul is based on some other alphabets, then please do so as a separate section in the article, not in the table where only hard facts should appear. Wookie919 (talk) 22:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not pushing for it to be included in the table, and the idea is already covered adequately in the body of the article. The evidence actually is very good, though a minority opinion. The Phoenician alphabet article is too full of weasel words. When you said "based on all those alphabets", I thought you'd misunderstood, and thought that Agnistus meant that each of those alphabets was a separate ancestor of hangul, whereas it's only Phagspa that's claimed to be directly ancestral. — kwami (talk) 23:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

It is true that the connection between Hangul and Phagspa is uncertain, although the evidence is very good. If the genealogical information was completely removed from the table, then it would say artificial script, which is not true; since there certainly is connection between Hangul and Phaspa (quoting kwami: "The evidence actually is very good, though a minority opinion."). It is best to list the entire genealogical information, with an additional notice that says the connection is uncertain. I have done this by including the word "(uncertain)" next to Phaspa in the table. - Agnistus (talk) 09:23, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I would just like to add that I have created a new article on the origin of Hangul called Origin of Hangul. I also removed the (uncertain) word since it affected the neatness of the table. (The 2 citations with regard to the controversial status of the Hangul-Phaspa connection were not removed). If any of you want to add it back, feel free to do so. - Agnistus (talk) 09:43, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

"It is true that the connection between Hangul and Phagspa is uncertain..." - Enough said. Again, removed from the info box. Wookie919 (talk) 04:51, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

"The evidence actually is very good, though a minority opinion." - Enough evidence to include parent systems in Infobox. - Agnistus (talk) 18:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Wookie919 (talk), please stop pushing lopsided POV - prove the hangul-phagspa connection to be false, before removing it from the infobox. - Agnistus (talk) 18:29, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

The above comment has a serious logical flaw in it. I don't have to prove that hangul is not based on phagspa. It is up to you guys to prove that phagspa is infact the parental system of hangul to include it in the infobox. "lopsided POV"? I could have used the exact same phrase in response to your post above - please try to stay objective. Now, let me say this again. Info box is a place for HARD FACTS, not THEORIES. If the evidence is enough, majority of the world would believe that phagspa is the parental system of hangul. I am not stating that there is NO possibility that a connection between phagspa and hangul exists. All I am saying is that this theory (while the evidence might seem good to both you, Agnistus, and Kwamikagami) is still only a minority opinion (as stated by Kwamikagami) and hence MUST NOT belong in the info box. Why is this so difficult for you to understand? The article already deals in depth with the possible connection between phagspa and Hangul. Wookie919 (talk) 03:23, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It's also not a direct connection, as such a table would imply. Any comment in the infobox should reflect that. kwami (talk) 03:30, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Let me make this clear to you now Wookie919, the aim is to make the infobox as close to the truth as possible. You could either say in the infobox that hangul is an artifcial script OR show all the information along with the word "(controversial)" next to Phagspa. Which one is closer to the TRUTH ??? To any sensible person the former is without question. And most readers will understand the uncertain nature of the connection the moment they see the word "(controversial)" next to Phaspa. I hope this clears any misunderstanding you may have, Wookie919. It would be in the best interests of everyone to close the discussion here, and leave the infobox with full genealogical information along with the word "(controversial)" next to Phagspa. Thank you - Agnistus (talk) 17:31, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, I don't edit this article, but I've been watching this for a while, Agnistus, and I guess I'll put my 2-cents in now. The theories you are putting forward at this page are all very interesting, but far, far from the standard, accepted history of hangul. I think you can see this, right? Wikipedia's standards are Wikipedia:Verifiability not truth. So if you believe with all your heart that these theories are the truth, it still does not make it the standard, scholarly, verifiable version of the history of hangul. Rather than engage in an edit-war to push this marginal theory as "truth" at the page, I would suggest discussing with the other editors here whether the theory deserves mention as an "alternate theory" section of the article. Keep up the path you are following though, and you'll probably wind up blocked eventually... Regards. Dekkappai (talk) 17:51, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

The connection between hangul and phagspa are completely verifiable (see Origin of Hangul). I thought placing the "(controversial)" tag wouldmake things clear for the reader, but it seems some editors still have a problem. Owing to the fact that the connection is indeed verifiable an closer to the truth, could those editors against showing full genealogical formatting provide a better explanation for doing so. - Agnistus (talk) 15:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Agnistus, Ledyard is a very respected scholar in the field, both in the US and in Korea. However, I don't know how many Korean scholars accept his conclusions on this point. I imagine that many maintain the traditional view that hangul is an artificial script. I don't know either way, but this could be checked in to.

The rest of you, the fact that a connection is disputed does not mean that it is not included in the info table. For example, the derivation from Brahmi from Aramaic is probably accepted by a majority of scholars, but is hotly disputed by some, especially in India. Such connections have normally been included with a warning. This is similar to the situation with languages, where few old families have been established beyond reasonable doubt. I can think of only Indo-european, Uralic, Austronesian, and Afrasiatic which have been demonstrated. Yet in our info boxes we include families like Sino-Tibetan, Tibeto-Burman, Niger-Congo, and Nilo-Saharan, none of which are particularly well supported, as if they were fact. kwami (talk) 23:35, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Agnistus, you are the one who wrote the whole article Origin of Hangul which is currently badly mis-titled (will get to that later) because it is merely a theory and it is basically a summary of the Ledyard's studies. Referring to Origin of Hangul only emphasizes that your argument is solely based on the thoughts of Ledyard, and nothing else. "The connection between hangul and phagspa are completely verifiable" - wow. Just wow. Now you have completed re-worded yourself as if to say that the connection is a HARD FACT! Wookie919 (talk) 03:36, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

One more thing, I am anxious to find out what your responses would be to the discussions of the article Origin of Hangul. It seems that you have taken only the bits that support your argument from Ledyard's and failed to see the whole picture of Ledyard's studies. Wookie919 (talk) 04:00, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Agnistus did not write the article. He just moved it. kwami (talk) 05:50, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe I heard that Korean was related to Altaic Language, rather than Tibetian Language, which derived from the west. I raise some questions that: 1. the table that shows the roots of the Korean Language is too far-flung and mostly unrelated, and 2. the table contradicts the generally accepted theory by linguistics that, many Altaic-Language-Mongols migrated into the Korean Peninsula. My main point is, Korean is ABSOLUTELY NOT included in Egyptian hieroglyphics nor the Brahmin Language, and that concludes that this dubious listing of roots of the Korean Language should be deleted.

In addition to that, I would greatly thank anyone who could add citation[s] that verify that Korean is related to Altaic roots.

Benhpark (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.204.49.221 (talk) 10:30, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Please note: this article is NOT about the Korean language. It is about the Hangul writing system, which was constructed rather recently and rather rapidly (as writing systems go) when King Sejong basically asked a bunch of people in his court to go out and research neighboring writing systems and then make up a good one for Korean. The infobox in this article is not listing "roots of Korean languag" but is listing the roots of the writing systems on which Hangul is based See Lee, Peter H., and Wm. Theodore de Bary, eds. Sources of Korean Traditon (Volume 1). Columbia University Press, 1997; this is a good collection of primary sources. Thank you, --Politizer (talk) 14:07, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The 'Phagspa connection in the infobox is back, courtesty of Special:Contributions/219.111.79.204 219.111.79.204. I didn't want to get involved in the debate, so for now I just wikified it (so it looks pretty and a reader can check out the relevant articles) and added a footnote so that readers know it's a controversial topic. You guys can decide whether or not to delete it. --Politizer (talk) 04:10, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

capitalization

에멜무지로 has changed the article to capitalize "Hangul". Since hangul is not capitalized in other articles, I've reverted to keep things consistent, but we should discuss it here.

에멜무지로 reasoned (1) that hangul is a proper noun, (2) that it is always capitalized, and (3) that hanja, kanji, etc. should also be capitalized.

AFAIK, hanja, hanzi, and kanji are never capitalized. As for hangul being a proper noun, the etymology section says the word is ambiguous between 'great script' and 'Korean script', which would mean it is not necessarily proper. It's hard to argue that it's a proper noun in English. It is often but by no means always capitalized; the difference is as significant as spelling differences, so you'll see "hangul" but "Hankul". If we don't capitalize hanja, which etymologically clearly is a proper noun, it does seem rather odd to capitalize hangul ("hanja-Hangul mixed script"). —kwami (talk) 00:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Dictionary.com says that it's from han 'great', but "frequently taken to be" from Han 'Korea'. The OED does not capitalize it in their entry; of the five quotations they include, it is capitalized in only one. If we're going to consider the greatest English dictionary, that's an argument against capitalization. kwami (talk) 00:33, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth: Britannica capitalizes Hangul, Websters does not. Doesn't matter to me either way, I suggest we settle on one and sticking to it though, so as to avoid being featured at Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars. Dekkappai (talk) 00:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I think Hangul should always be capitalized in manner because do we spell English as english or Revised Romanization as revised romanization? I think 에멜무지로 has a point on this. --Appletrees (talk) 00:58, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

But those are derived from proper nouns. Hangul (great script), like hieroglyph (sacred script), is not. kwami (talk) 02:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Others are runes, futhark, zhuyin, and ogham, though many sources are inconsistent. (Also, Younger & Elder Futhark are usually capitalized.) kwami (talk) 09:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd say let Hangul and Hanja stay. If that's what people write, let them write it so! --Kjoonlee 10:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Hangul is not capitalized in some other articles, but that's only because someone has been switching them to lowercase. On purpose. --Kjoonlee 10:57, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Hieroglyph is a term. Hangul is a name. You might say Hanja is a term as well, no more a name than kanji is. Nevertheless, I object to lowercase "hangul" as well. --Kjoonlee 10:59, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Richard Feynman wrote that he enjoyed decoding "Mayan hieroglyphics". Surely hieroglyphs are distinct from Hangul. --Kjoonlee 11:01, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't follow. "Hieroglyph" and "hanja" are just as much names as "hangul" is. What's the difference? kwami (talk) 18:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Can you say Hanguls? --Kjoonlee 09:21, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

No, but you can't say "a hangul" either, any more than "a futhark". They're the names of scripts, not the letters that make up the script. kwami (talk) 09:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but you can say "The elder and younger futharks" can't you? --Kjoonlee 12:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Because they are considered different alphabets. No-one speaks of more than one alphabet called "hangul". kwami (talk) 18:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

And won't you say that's also true of proper nouns? As a Korean speaker my linguistic intuition tells me that Hangul is a proper noun. Some other editors who object to lowercase Hangul are also Koreans, AFAIK. --Kjoonlee 06:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Hm, maybe it is. The lines for capitalization in English are rather blurry. Wouldn't hanja (and kanji) then be clear proper names, since they mean "Chinese character"? But I've never seen kanji capitalized. It just seems very odd to me to capitalize Hangul but not hanja, or to capitalize Hangul and Hanja but not hanzi and kanji. kwami (talk) 07:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Language isn't logic; people drive on parkways and park on driveways. --Kjoonlee 08:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

If we're not going according to logic, then we're back to dictionaries or polling Google. kwami (talk) 08:39, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

You're getting close to linguistic prescription again IMHO. --Kjoonlee 08:44, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Rather than OR, here are the refs I can find:

• Capitalized Hangul: Random House, American Heritage.
• Lower case hangul: Oxford English, Merriam Webster, Encl. Britannica.

Don't know about Penguin. American Heritage is a second-rate dictionary, whereas the OED and MW are considered the best in their countries. The best English dictionaries use lower case, though they both note hangul "is frequently capitalized". kwami (talk) 03:24, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Relying on dictionaries for authority is stupid IMHO. Why not just be descriptive, and let people write what they want to write? --Kjoonlee 06:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Unlike most dictionaries, the OED isn't just some lexicographer decreeing proper usage, but rather a record of how words are used in the real world. That strikes me as a better guide than our own OR. kwami (talk) 07:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

But have you looked at their corpus, or do you have an idea of whether they pondered on whether to describe "Hangul"? --Kjoonlee 08:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

What the published is mostly not capitalized. kwami (talk) 08:39, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

So if say, split infinitives were less common, it's OK to stamp them out from Wikipedia? No. --Kjoonlee 08:45, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

And who says that Random House, American Heritage were not recording how words are used in the real world? Maybe they polled a lot more Koreans. --Kjoonlee 08:50, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Since you don't like logic, and you don't like references, I guess spelling should be at the discretion of the editor? Should it be okay to mix capitalization within a sentence? a paragraph? an article? or just between articles, the way we do with US vs. UK spelling? Who then decides which form to use for any particular article? kwami (talk) 09:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

You have reached the illogical conclusion that I don't like logic or references. I like logic, and I like references, but I don't like prescriptivism. Spelling should (IMHO) always be left to the discretion of the editor, preferably to native speakers. That solves the problem of capitalization neatly. --Kjoonlee 09:18, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

If the OED says Hangul is frequently capitalized, and if Hangul is frequently capitalized at Wikipedia, then what's the problem, really? --Kjoonlee 09:23, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay. kwami (talk) 09:47, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

It still looks unresolved, nearly 5 years later: I appreciate the latest capitalization edit for consistency of hanja (lc), but it draws my attention to the fact that Hangul is still capitalized and the other words aren’t. MJ (t • c) 00:36, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Popularization of hangeul

I think that the section on the history of hangeul might be improved if information on the influence of Christian missionaries were added. The Western missionaries needed a written language that both they and the Koreans could learn quickly, and of course it takes less time to learn an alphabet than it does to develop an adequate reading vocabulary in Chinese. So, hangeul became the biblical language of Korea, which must have raised its prestige. One missionary even claimed that hangeul was created by divine providence for this very purpose. The evangelists' mission was highly successful in Korea, and they founded many schools in which hangeul must have been taught. Furthermore, many prominent leaders of the nationalist movements that promoted use of hangeul were Christian.

A condensed version of the above information--two or three sentences, perhaps--would contribute to a fuller picture of hangeul's jump from low to high prestige. I have sources for all of the information, as well. Would anyone mind if I added this to the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ling150 (talk • contribs) 08:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Offtopic but help needed

Can someone post me the characters depicted here? I would be very appriciated

3 Hangul chars

PS. Idk where I should post that :/... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.63.84.236 (talk) 07:38, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to mean anything.--119.149.135.35 (talk) 12:19, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

It's pronounced 'Tep-hik-luk' and it doesn't mean anything.--Younghyun0403 (talk) 13:19, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

mixed script

"But unlike in Japanese, hanja was used only for nouns."

Were they only used for nouns, or only for Sino-Korean, all of which were nouns? That is, were hanja used for native Korean nouns? kwami (talk) 20:22, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I know this is a quite late response. Anyway, the answer is "not exactly."

1. Many native Korean nouns don't have hanja.
2. Some adjectives and some verbs have hanja.

Therefore, we need to delete that sentence. --­ (talk) 18:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Deleted. --­ (talk) 18:29, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

According to one of my sources, hanja are/were not restricted to verbs, but in general the content words in a sentence would be written in hanja, while the function words would be in hangul: “An optimal text for efficient visual and semantic processing may be one that uses mixed scripts to enhance visual distinction of semantically important and unimportant words” (75). This is the source: Taylor, Insup. “The Korean writing system: An alphabet? A syllabary? A logography?” Processing of Visible Language 2. Eds. Paul A. Kolers, Merald E. Wrolstad, and Herman Bouma. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 65-82. 1980. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Politizer (talk • contribs) 00:28, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Most texts these days don't use hanja at all, and even conservative ones would likely only use hanja for some of the content words. Also, the article seems to say the mixed style was imported relatively late from Japanese.

Supposedly hanja were restricted to Sino-Korean quite early, but don't have the reference at hand right now. --JWB (talk) 01:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Public domain?

We have a clause "Hangul was promulgated in public domain by the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty, Sejong the Great," with the reasoning (on a different page history, when reverting a template) that "If King Sejong held a copyright, people couldn't use Hangul at all; that's why Hangul was on public domain when it was first announced."

Am I the only one who finds this problematic? Could we say essentially the same thing without invoking modern concepts of copyright? (Not that those would apply to hangul anyway.) Was there a possibility that Sejong could have promulgated hangul in the private domain? kwami (talk) 20:08, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Origin of Hangul#Copyright of Hangul?. --­ (talk) 21:47, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Now it's "copyleft"! I'm removing this as unhistorical. kwami (talk) 06:24, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

(And it's not just anachronistic, but technically wrong: you cannot copyright a writing system. kwami (talk) 06:50, 4 August 2008 (UTC))

New Readability Section

I added some information here. This isn't OR, but still it would be nice to get some more sources corroborating what I have there now (which mostly comes from a small number of sources), so if anyone has any other sources to add to that section or clarify things, they would be very welcome! Thanks. --Politizer (talk) 19:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

1. The featural nature of the script is unique. You should probably mention the term "featural" used elsewhere in the article to describe it. Whether it actually speeds comprehension is an interesting question. My guess is that it matters less than visual distinctiveness of the letters from each other. Hangul does have a predominance of square forms which may reduce distinctiveness; only the s/j/ch and ng/zero jamos are exceptions.
2. Hangul spelling has evolved from phonemic to more morphophonemic. Again, look at the material already in the article. It's still way more phonemic than English, but less than some languages. Morphophonemic spelling may actually be good for comprehension if it lets the reader recognize the word root more easily, and if transforming to actual pronunciation is easy for the reader.
3. Avoiding really long linear strings of symbols, and using the vertical visual field instead of just the horizontal, I think is a real benefit, and perhaps a reason for (syllable-blocked) Hangul's continued popularity.
4. Syllabicity may help in many cases but the syllable is not always the perfect unit for Korean, which does have many polysyllabic words. And often in actual pronunciation, the sound (or modified sound) of a jamo will be pronounced in an adjacent syllable, not in the syllable of the morphophonemic block where the jamo is written.
5. The practice of squeezing or stretching the jamo to make a syllable fit a square block may reduce distinctiveness of written syllable shapes. There are some fonts ("talnemo") that don't do this and keep jamo size more constant, while allowing syllables to be irregular, similar to Roman-alphabet typography features like descenders and ascenders that are supposed to improve reading speed. I added a discussion of this to the article recently, please look at it.
6. Is stroke count lower than in Chinese characters? It is over the set of all characters, but less complex characters are used more frequently. And when there are many homonyms, the hanja may have more strokes but also better comprehensibility. A stroke/complexity comparison to Japanese kana would also be interesting - kana seem stroke-efficient at least for the open syllables typical in Japanese. Any of these comparisons should cite studies in order to be at all meaningful.

--JWB (talk) 20:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

First of all, hanja isn't an alphabet. That needs to be changed immediately.

Second, whereas JWB expressed doubts that the featural aspect of hangul improves legibility, I believe it actually reduces it. That's because it forces many of the letters to have similar shapes and therefore to be less distinct. The only benefit of the featural aspect, besides aesthetics and national pride, is that it makes the script easier to learn by foreigners who know something of phonetics. It has no benefit for Koreans, or for foreigners either once letter recognition is automatic.

Since AFAIK the mixed script was introduced by the Japanese in imitation of Japanese, and never actually used very much (and certainly never used now), that paragraph is irrelevant to the section and should be removed. I believe it would indeed help legibility, as it does for Japanese, but that's a hypothetical question.

Per JWB, the morphophonemic aspect really does help with legibility. That's one reason irregular spellings in English are sometimes beneficial, and why for example Turkish seems to be evolving in that direction.

"graphs for consonants show whether the phoneme is voiced". False. The only voiced consonants are m, n, ng, and l, and there is nothing to show that they are voiced.

"there is nearly a one-to-one phoneme-graph correspondence". False. This is not a phonemic script. All consonants have more that one pronunciation, except for the three like ㅃ that do not occur at the end of a syllable. The the letter ㅅ, for example, is pronounced /s/, /t/, and /n/, and phoneme /n/ is variously written ㄴ, ㄹ, ㄷ, ㅅ, and ㅈ (and I believe even more, but I'd need to double check).

kwami (talk) 22:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

kwami -- As for the issues of voicing and the phoneme-graph correspondence, you can change those if you like; I am not a Korean speaker and so those two statements are just things I came across in secondary sources during research I did in the past, so I personally have no way of knowing whether or not those sources are correct.

As for whether the featural nature of Hangul helps or hinders reading, I personally agree with you guys that most of the things mentioned in certain papers (stuff like the shapes of phonemes reflecting the point of articulation, yada yada) shouldn't make a big difference once you've acquired the language to the point that you can read without thinking about it, and that they may even cause more errors since similar-sounding words will have similar-spellings (whereas in English, for example, "tuck" and "duck" start with almost the exact same sound, but no one confuses them in writing because t and d look nothing alike). The problem is, all of our speculation and gut feelings about those things (mine included) would count as original research, so until we can dig up some more recent sources that better evaluate these questions, I guess we're stuck with just writing the article in such a way that it's clear that these are just speculations which may not be true. (I tried to write it in that way my first time around, but I admit it might give a little too much weight to the view that Hangul are awesome, and not enough to the opposing view, for which I don't have any credible sources that aren't OR...I guess one thing we can work on is whittling down what I have written there now, so it's a little more compact and doesn't undue weight to one viewpoint).

As for the mixed script...do you have a source you could show me saying that mixed script was never used much? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just wondering, because my understanding had been that before the 20th century (or maybe earlier than that) Hangul was considered kind of lowbrow and barbaric and Hanja were mixed in as much as possible (the only source for that I have on hand is Anderson, Paul S. “Korean Language Reform.” The Modern Language Journal 32.7 (November 1948): 508-11. , which is very old). In any case, now that you mention it, I agree that it isn't relevant to hangul per se, and I will remove it after I finish writing this.

Finally, JWB, regarding the stroke counts...I have done some minor statistical comparison of Chinese and Hangul stroke counts, but not with a super-representative sample...and, besides, it's OR. I believe I have a source somewhere saying that the stroke count is lower (the reason I counted on my own in the past was to check that source) but I will have to dig it up; in the meantime, I'll add a [citation needed] tag.

Thanks for your comments, guys. --Politizer (talk) 22:54, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

kwami -- Hangul is a phonemic script, and each jamo has one pronunciation. It's that Korean orthographies are morphophonemic that sound changes due to assimilation, sandhi, etc. are not reflected in writing. 24.83.45.98 (talk) 13:39, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a source handy, but I wouldn't say mixed script was never used much. If it was used for a good part of the 20th century, that's still quite a lot.

The traditional scholarly attitude would have been to write Literary Chinese rather than Korean at all. Hangul was apparently initially intended for all-Hangul texts; for that matter, Japanese kana were initially used for all-kana texts. But it's quite possible mixed script got significant usage before the 20th century; I don't have evidence either for or against.

Our opinions are our own and not citeable, but on the other hand if none of us believe a claim (e.g. that the featural nature of the script aids reading) and it's not so widespread as to be notable, what reason is there to include it in the article?

The claims that seem most credible are the ones around nonlinearity / using both dimensions / visual variation / syllabicity. You might consider working these into the existing section on syllable blocking, which already mentions readability issues.

The stuff about stroke-count is less about Hangul in particular than about Chinese characters vs. alphabets in general, so perhaps treatment of this would make more sense in the Chinese character articles. --JWB (talk) 01:08, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'll go look into the syllable blocking section. Also, on a slightly unrelated note...the end of the first paragraph on syllable blocking says, "with the exception that single-consonant morphemes may not be written alone." Should that be single-vowel morphemes? It caught my attention, but as I'm not a native speaker, I wanted to check in with the rest of you first. --Politizer (talk) 01:21, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

No, it's consonant. For example, there is a politeness morpheme |p| that surfaces as /m/ in verbs such as hamnida. That's written syllabically as hap-ni-da, not morphemically as ha-p-ni-da. Or usually is, anyway. There are historical exceptions. kwami (talk) 01:30, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Single vowels don't really get written alone either, do they? (by which I mean, they get an extra circle, as in 이.) It could just be that I'm thinking of something different than what was being discussed at that point in the article. --Politizer (talk) 01:33, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking of saying something about that, but a vocalic morpheme such as 이 is still written as a separate block. The ieung is just a placeholder. There was a time when it was not: jib-i was written ji-bi, but that's no longer the case. There are a few vocalic morphemes that are written as part of the preceding block (usually something like o-a being written oa / wa), but I'll have to look them up. The point is that the lack of independent consonants is an orthographic rule similar to the requirement of ieung before an initial vowel. kwami (talk) 01:45, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Style

While it's true that books etc. have gone over to left-to-right, store signs, especially listings of menu itmes on walls of restaurants have not. I am about as likely to see top-to-bottom as left-to-right. It could also be noted that on such signs, the space is often block, so that you can get huge gaps between words and even syllables.Kdammers (talk) 07:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Is that notable, though? We do the same thing on store signs in English (and, as far as I know, just about every language that has been written for a long time). The use of vertical writing in restaurants, though, may be worth mention. --Politizer (talk) 13:10, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Another thing I notice in the Style section...the image is nice, but unfortunately the examples it gives for different fonts are all different characters! It's not a big deal, but could someone who has Photoshop (or some other software that would allow you to make a pretty image like that) make a new image in which the same characters are used to demonstrate each font? --Politizer (talk) 13:10, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

The Korean text is the Korean name of the font. --JWB (talk) 13:59, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Here you go: a longer sample MJ (t • c) 01:23, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I like that one. Would anyone be offended if I replaaced the current example with that? —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 01:58, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I’d rather leave the image in the article as is. The idea was to show analogous styles in the Latin script side by side. This new one I did just for your request. The fonts I used on Mac, btw, were #GungSeo, Apple Myungjo and Apple Gothic. MJ (t • c) 02:32, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I was totally confused by the different words, not knowing korean. I would really prefer it to be replaced because the description doesn't make much sense as is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.115.166.174 (talk) 21:51, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I changed the caption to a fuller description. I hope that addresses the confusion. I can see how the original was too terse, and that the graphic actually presents a lot of information in a small space. I think this is a good thing as long as it’s not confusing. But I did illustrate exactly what reading this section of the article made me want to see. MJ (t • c) 18:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I still wish we had an example showing the same characters in different fonts (rather than different ones in different fonts), but I can also see the benefit of having analagous Latin script next to it. I guess it's a trade-off someone will have to deal with, and since I am not interested in making a huge deal over this one image (and, besides, I don't have the software necessary to do anything about it anyway), I'm fine with whatever you put up there. (as long as it's not a penis or something, of course.) Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

letter variants

Maybe it's there and I just didn't see it, but I can't find any mention of the custom of printing (ㅇ)ㅏ as a squiggle below a consonant, as in 한, where there is a squiggle between the ㅎ and the ㄴ and nothing to the right of it . Kdammers (talk) 07:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Not quite sure what you are referring to, but maybe you are talking about the obsolete vowel ㆍ? Although it merged with ㅏ in many cases and ㅡ in others, it is a vowel in its own right and not a variant of ㅏ. However, as mentioned in the article in Korean Wikipedia, there are at least a couple of cases of contemporary use where it serves essentially as a variant of ㅏ meant to evoke archaic spellings, even when there is no etymological justification. This is equivalent to faux-archaic "ye olde inne" type spellings in English, and doesn't really rate mention in an encyclopedic article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.111.53.190 (talk) 18:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you think it rates mentioning? It can be seen occasionally to the total consternation of some-one using standard text-books or sources that don't elucidate it.Kdammers (talk) 07:52, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Block shape and unchanging jamo

Regarding the 2nd ¶ of the Block shape section:

However, some recent fonts (for example Eun, HY깊은샘물M, UnJamo) move towards the Western practice of letters whose relative size is fixed, and the use of whitespace to fill letter positions not used in a particular block, and away from the East Asian tradition of square block characters (方块字).

I would just like to comment that the style exemplified by the UnJamo fonts is that of a Korean typewriter, with only one glyph available for each letter. These had to combine to produce readable syllable blocks; the results are clear but uneven in terms of type color. Like our Latin monospace fonts, it’s not the best typography, but it comes to be recognized as a certain style in its own right. MJ (t • c) 03:38, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Japanese and Korean

Are the symbols shown in the top two rows at Image:Origin of Korean.jpg equivalent phonetically, or just simply coincidentally similar in shape? As the diagram doesn't give the pronunciations, it's not a very useful diagram. Badagnani (talk) 05:54, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

one comment by User:Politizer moved down during refactoring

Even better, answer the actual question I asked. Badagnani (talk) 06:15, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I didn't create the images and I'm not the person responsible for explaining them. I was just trying to bring people's attention to the problems with them. The question you asked was not mine to answer; I was just adding another question next to yours. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:18, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

They are not phonetically equivalent. The shape similarities are coincidental. —Dominus 06:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

(comment moved up from bottom during refactoring) It would be even better to actually answer the (very specific) question I asked. Badagnani (talk) 06:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Your question was answered in this edit. The answer was no, the similarity between symbols is a coincidence. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:54, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

If that is the case, there is dishonesty behind both the creator of that chart as well as possibly the editor who added it. Badagnani (talk) 06:55, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree, and given what's come up during this discussion I'm going to IfD all three images. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 07:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

That image and two similar versions of it by the same uploader have no source information and are of questionable value (one has already been challenged at its talk page by myself and another user). Does anyone have any opinion about whether to IfD them, or just make sure they're not used in any articles, or anything else?　 Here are the three images in question:

• Image:Origin of Korean.jpg
• Image:Korean,Japanese,Chinese.jpg
• Image:Korean,Japanese,Chinese1.jpg

(the last two appear to be duplicates of one another, the only difference being the left-justification vs center-justification of the kana). —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:09, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

->Answer

Source:(www.encyclopedia.com), (www.nationsencyclopedia.com)<- It says that Hangeul was copied by Chinese characters. And, (www.state.gov)<- It says that Korean was influenced by Japanese. So I just made it easier to see how Hangul had been influenced by Chinese and Japanese based on these websites.talk

Those "sources" are insufficient; Wikipedia requires a direct link to the exact article where you found that information, just a general domain name like encyclopedia.com and state.gov is not enough. And even if those articles do claim that Hangul was influenced by Chinese and Japanese characters, your images are still original research unless those articles specifically point out similarities between the same graphemes that you have in your images. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:33, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, as far as I know, the shapes of the consonantal jamo are mostly based on the shapes of the lips and tongue when making those sounds (ㄱ is the tongue with the tongue back raised towards the velum, and ㄷ is the tongue blade raised towards the alveolar ridge, for example), and vowel jamo based on the tongue height and frontness/backness. At least two of the books given in the Bibliography section have that in their introductory chapters. So, unless you can produce a real source, I will assume that the shapes are based more on that than on Chinese and Japanese characters. (Furthermore, your image ignores Mongolic, Tungusic, and other nearby scripts, which Sejong supposedly sent scholars out to research just before developing Hangul.) —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:48, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

->Answer

"Unlike Chinese, Korean does not use tones to make semantic distinctions. Its syntax, however, is similar to that of Chinese, while its morphology resembles that of Japanese. "

(http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Korean.html)

"The Korean language is related to Japanese and Mongolian. Although it differs grammatically from Chinese and does not use tones, a large number of Chinese cognates exist in Korean. Chinese ideograms are believed to have been brought into Korea sometime before the second century BC."

(http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2800.htm)

The two quotations you gave say nothing about Hangul. Really, absolutely nothing.

The first is not even about writing. It's about typology. Irrelevant.

The second is about Hanja, not Hangul. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:49, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

As an aside, I don't know if encyclopedia.com is a good source to use anyway. The text in the link you gave is just a replica of text from another encyclopedia, and apparently a bad one: the only sources it uses for its explanation are two introductory language-learning textbooks that are nearly 40 years old. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 06:53, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

But, I just read an article today in Korean that Hangul was copied from Chinese characters. ->(http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LS2D&mid=sec&sid1=105&sid2=226&oid=001&aid=0002390941)

'인사이클로피디아(www.encyclopedia.com)'와 '내이션스인사이클로피디아(www.nationsencyclopedia.com)' 등은 "한글은 중국 한자를 모방해 만들었다"고 왜곡했다. Even though it's not clear either, and I sent an e-mail to the auther, I still have no idea. And I don't think it'd be just a coincidence.  ^talk/_contribs 08:09, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Please don't make any more images while you still "have no idea"; wait until you are clear on something before creating and uploading an image about it.

As for that naver.com source, I don't speak Korean so I can't read it, but I doubt it is academically rigorous like the sources already in the article. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 07:23, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Not only is the naver.com "source" just a blog, but it never even mentions kana! Really, this whole thing is a load of BS. I'd guess that our author heard there are some similarities between Japanese and Korean, and—not being clear on the difference between language and writing—set out to fill in the gaps. AFAIK, there is no known historical connection between hangul and kana, except perhaps very indirectly if (as seems likely) Koreans introduced an idu type system to Japan along with Chinese characters. The comparisons themselves don't even bother with the sound values, so even as OR they're worthless. (I mean, Korean m with Japanese ro—if we're comparing squares, we might as well throw in Hebrew s and we can claim the Koreans are the Lost Tribe of Israel.) All three images should be deleted ASAP. kwami (talk) 07:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

The master has spoken. For the record, I have IfDed the second two of the images in my little bullet list above (you can find the IfD entries by going to those images pages); the first image is a Commons image and I have gone over there and done the Commons equivalent of IfD to it. —Politizer ^talk/_contribs 07:54, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Do I detect a note of sarcasm? :)

For the record, s.o. commented above that this sounds dishonest. I think that's uncalled for. (Though that may be hypocritical of me, since I was rather harsh right now.) I imagine this is someone who's used to chat rooms, and hasn't been around wikipedia long enough to know that wikipedia is supposed to be different. There's nothing dishonest in that. kwami (talk) 08:10, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

graphic complexity

"...the graphic complexity of Korean syllabic blocks varies in direct proportion with the phonemic complexity of the syllable." I can't buy this. What about the words with two-consonant padjims? What about words with 쯔 , ㅃ, ㄸ or ㅆ? I would say they all are graphically complex, but I don't think ㄸ is more complex phonemically than ㄷ is. Kdammers (talk) 09:27, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

There is of course not a perfect correlation. All this is really saying is that hangul is an alphabet: more phonemes mean more letters, with the exception of digraphs. I thought about just deleting it, but I'll leave that to others to decide. kwami (talk) 09:42, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

ㄸ is the faucalised version of ㄷ and occurs when two adjacent ㄷ are assimilated. For instance, '받다' and '바따' have the same pronunciation. So while ㄸ may be no more complex than ㄷ phonetically, it is possible that, within the framework of Korean phonology, ㄸ is perceived as a doubled ㄷ and thus has a greater complexity. The same argument holds for the other double consonants. As for two-consonant badchims, one of the badchims may be silent when their syllable occurs alone, but a sound following the syllable may force both badchims to be pronounced. For example, '삶' /sam/ => '삶이' /salmi/. This is due to the fact that the Korean orthographies are morphophonemic. I suppose better wording would be "...varies in direct proportion with the morphophonemic complexity of the syllable." 24.83.45.98 (talk) 04:05, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Latest addition

I'm not an expert, so I didn't feel comfortable just blindly reverting, but this addition looks pretty questionable to me. First of all, the source is a blog, which leads me to believe it's mostly OR and is the ref was just whatever the editor could find. Secondly, it suggests that ㆍ, ㅡ, and ㅣ stand for "heaven, earth, and human," and bases this assertion on the order in which they appeared in some early dictionary... as far as I knew, ㅡ and ㅣ had more to do with the backness/frontness of the vowels they represent?

Anyway, I won't revert by myself because I don't totally know what I'm talking about, but I'm just wondering if anyone else finds this questionable. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 00:46, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

That is the traditional etymology. See origin of hangul. kwami (talk) 01:58, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah. No problem, then. But could we get some better sources for it (perhaps from Origin of Hangul article)? Politizer ^talk/_contribs 02:19, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

stroke order: E (tieut) is flawed

Unless I don't understand the flow of information, the graphic for E (tieut) is in error. All the other graphics show the completed Hangul at the beginning of the stroke sequence; that one shows a partial Hangul missing the center (second) stroke. I can't fix it because I'm at work and don't have access to a graphics editor that writes .png's so I'm noting it here for someone else to fix. I'll come back later and fix it if someone else doesn't do it first. 12.151.32.25 (talk) 20:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)some anonymous person.

Hanja for N. Korean word, why?

I noticed someone edited one hanja (語 for the last syllable of 조선글) in the info box under “North Korean name.” Aside from doubting that this is right (語 is 어 as in 한국어 as far as I know), my bigger question is: Why write a North Korean word with hanja at all? They certainly don’t. I’m removing that line from the box; feel free to revert if you have a reason. (Also, why does the infobox template spell it “hancha” while everywhere else here I find “hanja”?) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mark R Johnson (talk • contribs) 16:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree: Koreans aren't using hanja to write their words. I think somebody who studied Chinese and Korean wrote that and wanted to put both here. I also think that it should be hanja, not hancha. Αδελφος (talk) 21:51, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

North Korean names are typically transcribed in Wade-Giles, which would be hancha. I would prefer that all Korean names use the same transcription, but that's a larger issue that should be brought up on the Korea project talk pages. kwami (talk) 23:15, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Indonesian tribe using Hangul?

Here's a link: [1]
Is this credible enough to mention in this page? --Tk TommyKim (talk) 18:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, AFP is as reliable a press source as any. The story has been picked up in the Jakarta Globe,[2] the Singapore Straights Times,[3] and the 2ch Times[4] (Japanese). I'd say that's RS, though it would be nice to get Ho-Young's on word for it. kwami (talk) 19:03, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Here is the Ethnologue entry for Cia-Cia, so at least we know it's somewhat legit (to whatever extent you choose to believe in Ethnologue's classifications). Personally, I think we can mention in the text somewhere that people doing Cia-Cia language revitalization have chosen to use Hangul, but I think we should hold out on making if "official"-sounding (by putting it in the infobox, etc.) until some time has passed so we can be sure this doesn't peter out into nothing. Unfortunately, language revitalization projects often do just that. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:16, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

As a side note: be careful how you mention it. I wouldn't be surprised to see Korean nationalist editors trying to add something along the lines of "Hangul was selected for transcribing Cia-Cia because Hangul is so great and so easy-to-learn". But based on the articles cited, I don't see any indication that Hangul was selected because of anything special about it. I was hoping to see something like 'the Korean phoneme inventory is similar to the Cia-Cia one, so this alphabet was seen as appropriate' or something like that, but it seems that the real reason is just that Korean linguists are the ones behind the Cia-Cia revitalization so they chose to use their own alphabet for it. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 19:20, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Since it's a fairly recently initiated movement, I don't think Hangul yet qualifies as "the" writing system for Cia-Cia. I'd recommend changing the way that's stated in the overview paragraph to something more tentative. I also doubt that the Cia-Cia movement merits mention in the first paragraph, but that's not my call. For now, I'll just rephrase "It has also been adopted as the writing system of the Austronesian Cia-Cia language." Samboha (talk) 04:31, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Patchim?

I noticed that this article had nothing about "patchim" in it. I am thinking about adding it in. Does anyone else agree, or is it unnecessary? Αδελφος (talk) 21:49, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

阿比留文字 and 児屋根文字?

Should 阿比留文字 (Ahiru moji) and 児屋根文字 (Koyane moji), both Hangul-based Japanese scripts, be mentioned here? Or should there instead be a See also link to Jindai moji and develop sections there? Or should a full articles on both be develped, with links to them from both this article and the Jindai moji article? CJLippert (talk) 16:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Those have been denied between 100 to 200 years ago by both in Japanese linguistics and historical study, so it is not even notable just like usual scripts.--Orcano (talk) 05:24, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Samson (1990)

Samson (1990) misrepresents Ledyard, and would appear to not understand his argument. He says, "So remarkable an achievement was Han'gul that some Western scholars to this day argue that it must have been developed on the basis of an earlier model", and give Ledyard as an example. This is completely off base: L never claims that Hangul must be based on s.t. else because it's too remarkable to be Korean; in fact, he goes to pains to deny such an interpretation of his work, and he clearly has a great admiration for Korea and its culture. And indeed, what he ascribes to Phagspa is the least remarkable aspect of the script: the shapes of a few letters. It is patently not the model for hangul in L's treatment. To mischaracterize him as considering the featural system unimportant, as Samson does, is dishonest. It's like saying that Diringer claims the alphabet was not an invention because the shapes of the letters came from hieroglyphs, or that Braille was not an invention because someone else had already invented the dot. Or take Cherokee: no-one claims that anyone pointing out the Latin sources of the characters is denying Sequoya's achievement, or that the Latin alphabet could not have been the antecedent of Cherokee because it's not syllabic. The featural system of the script was innovative in L's account, though of course based on Chinese phonological theory. (The script was of course a product of its time, as any invention is.) If we have a ref that most scholars reject L, fine, but the Samson quote should be removed as misinformation. kwami (talk) 01:38, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

ㅇ as a null initial and as a final

The text of “morpho-syllabic blocks” section, which apparently needs improvement:

When a syllable has no actual initial consonant, the null initial ㅇ ieung is used as a placeholder. … The sets of initial and final consonants are not the same. For instance, ㅇ ng only occurs in final position …

What means “consonants” in this context, letters-consonants or consonant sounds? As stated, ‹ ㅇ › may both initial and final, but it represents silent sound when be initial. BTW: is the silence a consonant or what? How to understand “ ㅇ ng ”: the ‹ ㅇ › jamo which English name is ng, or the [ŋ] (ng) sound written by the (final) jamo ‹ ㅇ ›? First interpretation is false, second leads to a tautology. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:11, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

ㅇ is a null consonant in initial position, ng in final position. These were originally two different letters. kwami (talk) 19:23, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps (from the historical point of view) there were two different letters, but currently in the article section I see the same code point U+3147 for both null consonant and final [ŋ] jamo. Unicode code chart shows similarly looking character U+3181 ‹ ㆁ ›, may be one of these is the null consonant and another – the [ŋ]? But if somebody claims that codes are really U+3147 for both different jamo, then such bizarre thing should be explicitly stated, say: despite they are encoded in Unicode by the same code, these characters are actually not the same… I do not know Hangeul, I just check the consistency. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 00:04, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

There are four types of Unicode blocks allocated for Hangul--1100-11FF "Hangul Jamo" block, 3130-318F "Hangul Jamo Compatibility" block, AC00-D7FF "Hangul Syllable" block, and FFA0-FFDF "Hangul Halfwidth Form" block. The character 3147 you are looking at is in the Compatibility block, which does not differentiate onset consonants from coda consonants. Jamo block, on the other hand, does differentiate between the two. Onset ㅇ is at 110B while coda ㅇ is at 11BC. The Compatibility block seems to exist mainly to be backwards compatible with a legacy Hangul encoding scheme called KSX1001, which used a filler character (3164) in such a way that when you pass a string FILLER-CONSONANT-VOWEL-CONSONANT, a syllable is rendered where the first CONSONANT is converted to an onset while the second CONSONANT becomes a coda. New Hangul strings *should* be coded with Jamo or Syllable block instead of Compatibility block, but people and software are slow to adopt. I don't think anyone uses the Halfwidth Forms. 24.83.45.98 (talk) 13:23, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Hangeul is a Korea Government's official spelling.

Hangeul is a Korea Government's official spelling. Hangeul(O) Hankeul(X) Han-gŭl(X)

http://www.korean.go.kr/09_new/dic/rule/rule_roman.jsp

There are two search boxes. In the below box, search a word "한글". --Gnulinux (talk) 12:22, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:10, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Hangul → Hangeul — Hangeul is a Korea Government's official spelling.

Hangeul(O) Hankeul(X) Han-gŭl(X)

http://www.korean.go.kr/09_new/dic/rule/rule_roman.jsp

There are two search boxes. In the below box, search a word "한글." --Gnulinux (talk) 02:52, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comment the poll above, from 2007 shows no consensus . 70.29.210.155 (talk) 04:31, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Hangul is more commonly used in the English-language literature, and this is English Wikipedia. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:47, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose - the Korean Government do not dictate spelling on en.wiki. We have our own conventions and reasons for naming articles outlined at WP:AT. According to those, the article is already at the correct title. Knepflerle (talk) 11:32, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. A quick Google search suggests that "Hangul" is far more widely used in English. --DAJF (talk) 15:43, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose as above; with the addition: this is claimed to be "a Korean government's official spelling". Which Korean government? (there are two) and why should the spelling in Korean (however phonetic that alphabet is) influence spelling in English? Septentrionalis PMAnderson
  • Neither of these is the spelling "in Korean" (that would be 한글). They are spellings in the Latin alphabet, and are just two different ways of trying to represent a sound that doesn't have a consistent spelling in languages that use the Latin alphabet. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
    • Then why is a link to a web page in Korean evidence at all? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
      • He was trying to illustrate that if you use the search box on that page to search for 한글, it brings back some results spelled Hangeul. But you are right that it's still not a reason for us to change our spelling. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

• Comments: There are a lot of claims above, but no evidence is given. The very first English citation given in the OED is for hangŭl (McCune-Reischauer). Martin's many works use hankul (Yale); this is fairly common in linguistics. Recent general books seem to mostly be hangeul (Revised Romanization). There does not seem to be a consistent English spelling. Not my preference, but there is a preference for Revised Romanization on Wikipedia, so perhaps it would be ideal to use hangeul as neutral and consistent. 114.162.44.129 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:17, 24 May 2010 (UTC).
  • Regarding my claim, Google scholar has 4000 hits for Hangul and 700 for Hangeul (along with a "did you mean Hangul" message); Google Books has 1000 for Hangul and 600 for Hangeul. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:51, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

There are plenty of problems with web searches. However, your results for hangul/hangeul for Books is surprisingly closer than I would have thought. That said, I looked at a few dozen of the results for Hangul. Many of them are actually matching hangŭl as hangul, which invalidates the dataset. For example, take the very first book: "The Korean Language" by Iksop Lee and S. Robert Ramsey. (I own this book.) It is actually hangŭl, which can be verified online as well. There are numerous other similar results in the other books. 114.162.44.129 (talk) 05:11, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose Entries in English dictionaries such as American Heritage and Merriam-Webster, or usage in Encyclopaedia Britannica certainly establish that "Hangul" is the English name for the alphabet. What is the correct romanization or what romanization system to use is irrelevant here because we do not substitute a systematically transliterated name for the common English form of the name, if there is one per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). --Kusunose 06:22, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Cia-Cia

Apparently Hangul is not being used for Cia-Cia anymore (or at all; the source below makes it sound like it was all hype):

• Mair, Victor (7 October 2010). "Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part III". Language Log. Retrieved 7 October 2010.

rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:15, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

The Korean government's King Sejong Institute has decisively withdrawn its tentacles from Sulawesi, killing any hope for the revival of this project.[5] Also, Mair reconfirms that this effort was not only impractical, hyped by the media, and not widespread at all but also illegal all along.[6] This emptiness should be made absolutely clear in the article, and Cia-cia removed from the infobox. Shrigley (talk) 18:26, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Error, need help fixing

"In addition, there are 10 obsolete double letters: ㅥ, ᄙ, ㅹ, ᄽ, ᄿ, ᅇ, ᇮ, ᅏ, ᅑ, ㆅ."
ᅇ appears twice. What was the original 10th? ㆀ? — MK (^t/_c) 05:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Those are two different characters. The first is choseong ssangieung and the second is jongseong ssangieung. Bendono (talk) 07:57, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, they look identical in my font and when I checked their unicode character number that day, I accidentally used ascii to check and they both threw the same number. Thank you for clearing that up. — MK (^t/_c) 12:15, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Hangeul is a Korea Government's official spelling. (2)

OK, so when the country Kampuchea decided to rename themselves Cambodia, everyone in the world just accepted their right to name their own country whatever they like. Now that Korea has decided to discard a ridiculous western system of romanization in favor of a more logical one for their own language, some retards think they are wrong and just want to keep using Hangul because it would be a real pain in the ass to actually let Koreans decide the name of their own language. Nice one. I especially like the "official names" box that lists the official south korean name as "hangul". You go Wikipedia! You tell those Koreans how fucking stupid they are trying to name their own language!

So, please pull your heads out of your ass and realize that the official name is Hangeul, as declared by the country that actually uses that language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by YouFrackingRetards (talk • contribs)

This has already been discussed. Also, please review Wikipedia's naming policy, and in future messages please refrain from personal attacks. rʨanaɢ (talk) 05:02, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, actually, it was in the 1970s that the Khmer Rouge wanted the rest of the world to call the country Kampuchea, but the rest of the world ignored them. Meanwhile, in Cambodian the name has been Kampuchea all along. So before you demean other people's intelligence, consider what you're demonstrating of your own. —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:45, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

audio pronunciation says hanzi not hangeul

audio pronunciation says hanzi not hangeul —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.22.114.69 (talk) 22:44, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Contradiction re aspiration stroke

Early in describing the jamo, the article says that it's the top stroke of ㅌ t [tʰ] that denotes aspiration. But later we find that d [t] is ㄷ, so that apparently isn't true. If anything, it would be the middle stroke that denotes aspiration—which is consistent with the case of ㄱ g [k] and ㅋ k [kʰ]. I'd fix it but I don't know any details beyond the obviousness of the contradiction. Can someone else please fix it? —Largo Plazo (talk) 13:38, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. — kwami (talk) 10:05, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

removed vandalism, comment posted

I removed the comment [Have these logically impossible ones ever been used?] from directly after the 41 obsolete vowel diphthongs section, but the point still stands - have those vowel diphthongs ever been used?Vanisaac (talk) 04:53, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK they were never used for Korean, but then hangul was not devised for Korean: it was meant to transcribe both Korean and Chinese. When hangul was revived, it was not part of Chinese scholarship in Korea and so was only used for Korean. All Chinese-only letters are therefore obsolete. I suspect (but don't know) that they were only ever used in Sejong's day, due to the general opposition to hangul among Chinese scholars. — kwami (talk) 10:02, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Confused

Let's take the example 한글. To someone who knows nothing about Hangul, this appears to be two characters. My computer also treats it as two characters. Nowhere in the article does there appear to any list of these characters or any explanation of how they are composed. OK, having spent ten minutes searching, I may have missed something, but it should be very obvious in the article. What I'm guessing is that these things that appear to be characters are what are called "syllabic blocks" in the lead section. No one who didn't already know would realise that without going through a lengthy stage of puzzlement. What happened to me is that I got to the list of "Jamo", which I expected to be "characters", or "letters", but I don't see anything resembling 한 or 글. If I'm right, somewhere there needs to be a big prominent diagram, showing a representative character, say 한, labelled a "syllabic block" (if that's it's name). The diagram needs to show that this "syllabic block" is made up of a certain number of these "jamo", and give a clear idea of how the it represents a syllable, if that's the case. There is also no indication that I can see of how many of these "syllabic block" permutations exist...

Sorry this is a bit rambling but I have no time now to finesse it. Suffice to say that, for someone coming to the article for a quick understanding, the article seems to be very deficient in explaining what to the uninitiated seem to be "characters" and therefore the most fundamental thing that they expect to be informed about. 86.176.211.86 (talk) 01:51, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with your criticism. I think the article has a lot of technical information and historical detail that is useful for someone who already knows about hangul and wants to learn more in-depth information, but is probably not accessible to someone who doesn't know the first thing about the script. The first time I ever read this article was after I had already learned about hangul elsewhere so I didn't have problems, but I could imagine someone in your situation coming having a hard time understanding this; I myself have a hard time finding what I'm looking for when I come here to look up a particular jamo or something. I am not actually a Korean speaker and I'm not an expert on hangul, so I don't think I can undertake cleaning up this article in the near future; just wanted to chime in and let you know you're not crazy for having this concern. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:58, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

(OP) OK, I see you reinstated my comment above which I had deleted; that's fine, but just to point out here that I actually deleted it with the comment "sorry, there are some diagrams, I think I must be too tired to be doing this now", so's people don't feel the need to point out again that there are diagrams. I think I was mostly thrown off the scent from the outset, by this "syallabic block" concept, and thinking that the "jamo", described as "letters", are the things that appear to me to be "characters", and that the "syllabic blocks" were larger units. I hope to come back here some time soon with some concrete proposals. I think just a few judicious words in the lead section and the "Jamo" section would have saved me some confusion. 86.160.212.182 (talk) 17:27, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Further on this topic, what actually is the view on the word "character" as it applies to hangul script? In some materials I have seen, symbols such as 한 and 글, for example, are called "characters", and this was my perception before I came to this article. However, this article seems to largely eschew the term "character", and in the few places that it is used in relation to hangul, it seems to refer to the "jamo", not the "syllabic blocks". Any thoughts? 86.160.212.182 (talk) 21:43, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Jamo is obscure jargon if it's English at all. I think it should be replaced with normal English "letter" or "digraph" except in parentheticals. Is there any advantage to using such an obscure term?

"Character" is avoided because they aren't characters, any more than English words are characters. They mimic the shape of Chinese characters, but are composed of simple sequences of letters.

Daniels and Bright use "letter" and "syllable/syllabic block", though they also use the rather ambiguous "symbol" and "sign". AFAICT, the term "jamo" is not used. — kwami (talk) 21:58, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, so you think usages like the following are bad examples that we shouldn't follow?

"Modern Korean is written almost entirely with a separate system of Hangul characters constructed of smaller pieces called jamo letters." [7]

"Each Korean character (hangul, 한글) represents one syllable." [8]

"Each Korean (Hangul) character is made up of building blocks called Jamo." [9]

If so, I think this terminology point is worth mentioning up front. My guess is that many people who know nothing about Korean, but have merely occasionally seen it written down, imagine that each of those blocks is a "character". If this is a bad way of thinking of it, then it would be useful to set people straight at the start to prevent confusion later. I don't personally have a problem with "jamo" unless it is hopelessly obscure (which isn't the impression I get from other sites). It has the potential advantage that the reader will have no preconceived idea of what it means, whereas they could easily think that 한, say, was a "letter". 86.160.212.182 (talk) 22:59, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think the wording of all of those is unfortunate. "Jamo letters" is like saying Korea is a "country land".

Hangul = the Korean alphabet. We should probably say that somewhere.

I agree about an explanation up front. They do look like characters, which seems to have been the point.

How's the lede now?

BTW, I added a point about how NKorean tense consonants are written differently, but in the section on sorting order it looks as though they're now written the same. When did this change? — kwami (talk) 00:27, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I feel like the clearest way to introduce the concept (caveat: I haven't looked at kwami's revision yet, so maybe the problem is already solved) would be to not make a big deal out of jamo at all (e.g., don't say "each Korean character/syllable/whatever is made up of a bunch of jamo), but rather just treat them as normal letters and mention they're arranged in syllabic blocks. Something along the lines of (very loosely) "Unlike the Latin alphabet, in which letters are written out linearly, letters in Hangul are arranged into a "block" for each syllable". rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

• (OP) A very belated thanks to the editors who have made the lead section so much clearer. 109.153.234.114 (talk) 02:21, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Different examples for Stroke order section?

Currently in that section, 6 base vowels and 2 dipthongs (ㅐ (ae) and ㅔ (e)) are shown. I suggest re-ording to show the six base vowels, then only one of the dipthong vowel and also add one iotized vowel, or have the two non-base vowels be a combination of the dipthong and iotized vowels where one is based upon either ㅏ (a) or ㅓ (eo), and the other based upon either ㅗ (o) or ㅜ (u). (I would have made a replacement graphic(s) but don't have the appropriate image editing program at the moment.) CJLippert (talk) 18:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Consonant Clusters

I'm no expert on Korean, but looking at the Wiktionary entry for 함께 leads me to believe that the so called "consonant clusters" might have never been pronounced as such. Rather, the extra consonants serve to alter the pronunciation of the surrounding consonants as in modern words like 없다. 함께 (ㅎㅏㅁㄲㅔ), for example, came from the obsolete hangul sequence ᄒᆞᆫᄢᅴ (ㅎㆍㄴㅴㅢ). I would guess that the following changes happened:

1. ㆍ → ㅏ (Vowels sounds merge as with other words containing ㆍ.)
2. ㄴㅂ → ㅁ (The nasal takes on the place of articulation of the following consonant which is ㅂ from ㅴ. Pronounced alone, ㅴ would have simply been ㅺ)
3. ㅺ → ㄲ (The ㅅ was prepended to a consonant to mark it as tensed. As such, it's merely a change in orthography.)
4. ㅢ → ㅔ (The ㅡ became a front vowel like ㅣ, changing to an ㅓ which I believe was pronounced /e/.)

The Korean resources might have more information on this, but I don't read Korean very well so I've been confined to what I could find in English.

LCS (talk) 16:09, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you're seeing historical change. The 'tense' consonants, for example, did not exist in Sejeong's day, and ㄲ did evolve from sequences like ㅺ. But that doesn't mean it wasn't originally pronounced /sk/. AFAIK, there's no reason to think that hangul wasn't approximately phonetic when it was devised. Consider Italian, where "Victoria" is pronounced Vittoria. That doesn't mean that in Latin ct was pronounced /tt/, only that it changed to /tt/ in Italian. — kwami (talk) 06:38, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Rename article?

I propose that the article be renamed to "Korean Alphabet", to maintain a neutral POV and to avoid debates regarding the Romanization of the title. Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 17:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe that should come from the Korean Language Institute itself. But at the moment, it should stay as Hangul (or Hangeul, or whatever it may be...). -- Merrick Lee 04:49, 02 December 2012

Korean State Railway

Could someone write Choson Cul Minzuzui Inmingonghoagug in Hangul/Chosongul for the Korean State Railway article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.19.205.144 (talk) 15:07, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

The article in Korean is 조선민주주의인민공화국 철도성, so I assume that's what you're looking for. rʨanaɢ (talk) 17:05, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

hangul's 3000 year history

koreans claim alphabet more than 3000 years old

http://view.koreaherald.com/kh/view.php?ud=20120702000747&cpv=0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.10.40 (talk) 01:08, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

• Korean newspapers will print anything, especially in their online editions. Darkpoet (talk) 06:31, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Koryo-mar

Koryo-sarams, who are speakingKoryo-mar, in my presumption, are also using Hangul (or Hangul or whatever...) alongside Cyrillic. But the thing is, do they recognise it as Hangeul or Chosongul? It is evident that Koryo-mar is a continuum of Hamgyong dialect and can be considered as a seperate language since it is not intelligible with any of the two standard versions of Korean. How will that be? -- Merrick Lee 02 December 2012 4:46 (UTC)

Confusing Section :: Letters

While I was reading the article again, I have realized that is is always confusing when reading the section following "The following letters and sequences are found:"

Might I suggest a complete rework of that section?

The article mixes obsolete with those still in use...then followed with more obsolete items. It is not laid out logically. 13 obsolete consonants (not indented), followed by obsolete *double* consonants (indented), followed by obsolete *double* consonants (not indented). followed by obsolete consonant clusters (indented).

The flow is bad, and I don't see the current format as being appropriate for the message trying to be displayed - aka the "usability" of that section is horrible.

There are many small problems in this article that are similar, but this seemed the biggest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ciscorucinski (talk • contribs) 18:00, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I separated them out. — kwami (talk) 23:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

It is beyond time for hangul to be changed to hangeul

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to keep on promoting an outdated romanization. By keeping the name hangul in use, we are going against the official English romanization of Korean that is promoted by the South Korean government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Romanization_of_Korean

It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with the new system. Actually, calling it new is odd in and of itself as it's been around since 2000. It's the official way to romanize Korean, so it's time for a Wikipedia wide change. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aleenik (talk • contribs) 12:47, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Vectorization of Hangeul_New_Version.jpg

I created a vectorized derivative of Hangeul_New_Version.jpg at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hangeul_New_Version_Vectorized.svg and tagged Hangeul_New_Version.jpg superseded. I don't know what else has to be done to use this improved image. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ynniv (talk • contribs) 21:08, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Number of hangul combinations

The number of consonants + double-consonants (ex. ㄱ, ㄲ) is 19, single consonants = 14. There are a total of 21 vowels + diphthong vowels. There should be a total of 19*21 = 399 possible combinations for "two letter words". If one then assumes that all consonants are valid for a final letter (받침), this is not the case, then there should be 19*21*14 = 5586 possible combinations for a "three letter word" and 78 204 combinations for a "four letter word". Note that vowel diphthongs are included with vowels as a single letter in this. However, my "精选韩汉汉韩词典" (Korean-Chinese, Chinese-Korean dictionary), the following are listed as possible final "letters" (받침): ㄱ, ㄲ, ㄳ, ㄴ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄽ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅄ, ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅇ, ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅎ. With this restriction, there would appear to be, then, a total of 19*21*27 = 10 773 possibilities for >= "three letter words". That brings the total number of combinations to 11 172. Should this be added to the article? Someone asked for a reference in the introduction where this is mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 제이5 (talk • contribs) 08:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

There are many others if we don't restrict ourselves to modern Korean. But your numbers assume any combo of C1-V-C2 is possible, when there may be restrictions. That's why we need a ref. — kwami (talk) 11:19, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Opening sentence is muddled

The Korean alphabet, often romanized in English as Hangul ...

This reads either as if the actual phrase "Korean alphabet" is romanised as "Hangul", or as if "Hangul" is a system for romanizing the Korean alphabet, both of which are obviously untrue. The actual Korean name (in Korean writing) needs to be inserted somewhere early on in that sentence, so that "romanized" has something relevant to refer to. 217.44.215.152 (talk) 20:29, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Agreed that it wasn't very clear. Hopefully it's better now.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 21:20, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for the quick response! 217.44.215.152 (talk) 00:13, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

It's a pleasure. :) BTW, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Everyone who wants to productively contribute is encouraged to be bold. Your contributions would be welcome.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 00:58, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Readability

The whole section on readability is very weak. It rests on one single source, that source is 34 years old and has not been corroborated since. What is more, the source is only a conference paper, not an academic article, making WP:RS and possible WP:UNDUE an issue. Building a whole section on one single source that is only a conference paper is not sufficient. Unless better support can be found, I suggest the readability section be removed.Jeppiz (talk) 12:45, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

신문Sinmun(新闻) 보도bodo(报道) are chinese and 뉴스nyuseu(news) is english,most so called change just change another boot to lick

this is really low for a nation's behavior

no really difference between kbs뉴스 or kbs신문,they are both not korean, korean have no their own words for most of things, even daily important things have no korean word ,large portion of korean words just plain other language use korean to pronounce, and korea people claim its korean shamelessly

basically korean change their words for real ruler of korea , now america rule korea so they just try really hard to change chinese word into english word

Confusion

Normally the resulting block is written within a square of the same size and shape as a hanja (Chinese character) by compressing or stretching the letters to fill the bounds of the block; therefore someone not familiar with the scripts may mistake Hangul text for hanja or Chinese text.

This is an encyclopedia. We don't need a statement that some people might confuse Hangeul with Chinese. Why don't we add that someone might mistake it for Japanese Kana or some other script? --2.245.126.83 (talk) 02:07, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Any source for 韓㐎 and 朝鮮㐎?!

Would you stop making a joke out of Wikipedia and remove 韓㐎 and 朝鮮㐎? "글" is a native Korean word and doesn't have a hanja form!!! --Anatoli (talk) 07:05, 24 October 2015 (UTC)