hangul is the essence of...hangules?

I can now read and write Korean (as of August, actually). It’s the most phonetic language in the world (reportedly 99.9% of Koreans are literate), and is entirely syllabic. It’s easy to pick up once you have the letters memorized, and there are only a few odd rules that can psyche someone out--but not nearly as many as in the English language. An 's' sounding letter can become a 't' sounding letter if it falls at the end of a syllable, and they may have a stand-in character if the syllable starts with a vowel--but they don't have silent Ks, Ps, Es, GHs, or any of the other crazy consonant combinations with which the English alphabet is riddled. I may have no idea what the fuck I’m reading or writing most of the time, but sometimes, just sometimes, I can pick out the meaning of a word that I've just read because something like 20% of Korean words come from English words (eg: taxi is /t/ak-si; beauty is bee-ut-I; cake is kay-ee-ku*). Any English word can be translated, so to speak, to Korean. James = Jay-eem-su*. It's weird: I find it odd that Koreans don't have their own word for some of the English loaner words they use. For example: Board is bo-du*; marker is ma-ku*. But I guess English is pretty pervasive, and seeing as Korea is trying hard to integrate the English language into their culture, it makes sense. (It's not like French where they'll go out of their way to bar any influence from any other language...computer is ordinateur.) I was looking out to the skyline at night once, and noticed there wasn't an ounce of Korean on the skyline; it was all English. I could have taken a picture and no one would have guessed where it was from.

The biggest rule in Korean is each consonant /has/ to be linked with some sort of vowel. It now makes sense when each kid in my class pronounces something like “hint” as “hin-ta.” The n-t combination is too foreign to them with out a vowel to break them up. The emphasis on the syllables is also huge; carve a consonant with your mouth on the wrong syllable and you'll run into a snag. I've had a couple of problems in taxis when pronouncing a subway stop. For instance, I said "sam-yun" instead of "sa-myun." Those subtle differences in English can mean all the difference in Korean; I could have been saying "coffee table" instead of the subway stop. It really pisses me off when I'm in a cab with a couple of folks and they get all pissy at the cab driver for not understanding us. Um, we're not speaking the language properly, and you're getting mad at them? Foreigners here can be fucking douches, but more on that later.

The Korean alphabet is unique among all the languages because it was the only alphabet made to order. In the 1400s one of the Korean kings commanded research to be conducted in order to produce a writing system especially designed for writing Korean. The accuracy and sophistication of their research and phonological analysis is still a source of amazement to linguists today, apparently. The letters in the Korean alphabet give subtle clues as to how to form your mouth: the n-sounding letter looks a stunted L, and it lets you know the tip of your tongue should be touching the top of your mouth when pronouncing the character.

The hardest part about the language is the pronunciation. One letter, for example, can be a g-sounding letter (as in goat) or a k-sounding letter (as in king), depending on where it falls in the word/syllable. Sometimes, however, it's both, like a combination of the two. Another letter can be a j-sounding letter (as in jab) or a ch-sounding letter (as in chew)...and sometimes it's both. Same goes with t/d. My kids yell at me in frustration when I can't make the g/k sound, and I don't know how much practice it's going to take before I can master it. But they're always really impressed when they tell me a word or their Korean name and I can write it on the bo-du* with my ma-ku*.



*the u as in put