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)

I think there are two issues that concern us now, especially this year in which we are at the 550 th anniversary year (1996) of the promulgation of the Korean alphabet. One is a totally unexpected rise of Korean as a language that has world importance. The Korean language has suddenly burst on the world scene as important. In the United States , Korean is one of the so-called “Five Critical Languages.” And in American national educational policy, suddenly it has become important as a language that should be learned, and even tests (SAT II) are being devised for our entrance examination for colleges that involve Korean. The other thing about the language which has become important in recent years is a growing awareness of the people around the world, that the Korean writing system is something more than an exotic curiosity; it has become the focus of attention.

This is particularly true of people who take the trouble to understand something about how the system works and of the design of the system. And that goes especially for linguistics. Linguists have become interested in this writing system, even if they are not involved in Korean. Now, what is it about this writing system Hangeul that make people like me, a Westerner, feel so passionate about it? For us Hangeul is unlike any other writing system in the world. If you take the trouble to understand the logical consistency and really the mathematical intelligence that underlies it, Hangeul gives one the aesthetic pleasure of a beautifully designed system.

It is because the alphabet that we are so used to in the Western world was not invented, but is something that developed in the hands of many people over many hundreds of years and finally, of course, the Greeks stumble upon the principle of vowels, by accident, and that's what made alphabetic writing really possible. But in the case of Korean we have something that was actually invented. Countries around Korea never understood the alphabetic principle. In China , they focused on the syllable. They understood as the high point of Chinese logical science that the syllable could be divided into an initial and a final. But they never knew where to separate the vowels. It is in Korea , in the hands of King Sejong, that the principle of the vowel was discovered. I mean it was a brilliant discovery in which the syllable was divided into three: the initial consonants, mid-vowels, and the terminal/final consonants. That's quite extraordinary. And it made the writing system into a true alphabet, but that was only the first step. The next step is the integrity of the syllable, what the Koreans call Moa - ssuki ( ???? ). This is something that is lacking in Western writing systems, we have no iconic awareness of the syllable. This kind of thing is preserved in Korean, in spite of the fact that it is an alphabet. But Korean also preserves the language at other deeper levels.

The fact is there are two more things that could be said about it and these are things that make Hangeul quite unique. One of these things is the construction of the consonants. The basic consonants are constructed on the principle of graphic representation of the consonant as they are actually being pronounced. This is something like, if anybody remembers… “My Fair Lady,” and “Henry Higgins.” Henry Higgins was modeled on a man named Henry Sweet, who invented something called “ visible speech .” But that was a transcription system, never meant to represent a real language. So, Korean is the only kind of system ever invented that was actually used in that way to transcribe the sounds of an actual language.

Beyond that, there is the principle of the design of the alphabet, and this is the thing that linguists have focused on. There is a graphic representation of articulatory features. In other words, in Korean, there are features of the letters that show the internal relationships of the consonants. For example, if you have the consonant ? , you add one stroke to the same basic letter and get ? . You take the same basic letter ? , you add yet another stroke, you get ? . If you look at other alphabets, say the Roman alphabet, you will see that N, D, and T are totally different letters.

Yet each one of these letters represents consonants that are pronounced at the same place in the mouth. But the letters don't show that there is any relationship between them. Hangeul , on the other hand, shows this internal consistency. It's a system that was designed to take advantage of the fact that these consonants are actually pronounced in the same place. That's what I think the linguists have focused on recently, and in fact there is a recent book that has become quite well known by a British linguist Geoffrey Sampson.

Sampson's point is that the classification of Korean is unlike any other writing system in the world. It's not an alphabet, it's not something else, but rather it's a featural writing system , and it's the only one like that. Now, some people would question that in fact, Koreans don't necessarily use it because of the design features that Sejong made. I think it is clear that Sejong did design it as a featural system, but that is not the way it is being taught today and so that can be questioned. Yet, this kind of debate among Western scholars is something that is quite new. It shows the increasing popularity, the awareness, shall we say, of Korean and the Korean Hangeul writing system rising worldwide.

Linguists also have discovered the text that we celebrate this year (1996), the promulgation text of Hwunmin Cengum , in which it is actually announced that the script had been invented. This work itself is another reason why Korean is so special because in this text, the design features of the script and their usage are described. It's an extraordinary analysis of the Korean language of the time. In fact, it is really quite anachronistic that the kind of phonological analysis described in the text could be made in that place and in that time. It's something that is really quite astonishing . Hwunmin Cengum is an amazing accomplishment .

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Robert Ramsey, Chair, Dept. of Asian and East European Languages and Cultures, University of Maryland