4. Excerpts from the Interviews with Foreign Scholars

—Their Views on Hangeul in 1996 (the 550 th Anniversary of the Promulgation

of the Ortho-phonic Alphabet)

(A) Interview with Prof. James D. McCawly

 (1) Hangeul is the most ingeniously devised writing system that exists. It occupies a special place in the typology of writing systems. It is the only writing system in the world that divides sentences not only into words, syllables and individual sounds but also into articulatory features. The achievement of its creators in the 1440's was really amazing. I mean, they were doing work that would qualify as excellent linguistics by the standards of five hundred years later. So it is an amazing achievement and there is even a day that is devoted to the celebration of its adoption. I think it is an excellent reason for the linguistic world to celebrate as one of our holidays. That is the reason why I have been having my own Hangeul Day party every year for the last twenty years or so, inviting over my fellow linguists, students, colleagues, and other friends, and serving lots of Korean foods and gathering for the celebration of our holiday.

(2) It is the only writing system in which the shapes of various letters involve components that correspond to articulatory features. In this respect, it is completely unlike any other writing system. Hangeul has a number of principle types of writing systems. First, there are writing systems like Chinese where the sounds of the words that are represented are irrelevant or come only in a minor role. Other writing systems such as “Kana” in Japanese have symbols which individually correspond to whole syllables, but do not divide them into the consonants and vowels that make them up. We also have alphabetic writing systems that have symbols for individual consonants and vowels, but do not have any significant internal structure to the letters. This is what Hangeul has over most of the alphabetical writing systems. And Hangeul has the really unusual and remarkably constructed alphabet that has systematically expressed sound components to the letters. Each letter indicates articulations that are involved in producing the corresponding sound. In addition, the letters are grouped together into the graphic units corresponding to syllable types. So, what you have is essentially all of the significant linguistic units represented fairly directly in Hangeul . In this respect, it is very unlike any other writing system.

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Dr. James D. McCawley, Andrew MacLeish, Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Linguistics and East Asian Languages & Civilization, the University of Chicago .