The Hangul Alphabet Paper

This is a paper I just wrote for English class. Figured it was decent enough to share. ^^

Less Challenging Than It Appears 

         As soon as I tell someone with no previous knowledge of the Korean language that I can read Hangul, which is the Korean alphabet, they look at me with amazement. I realize that this is because of a common misconception that all foreign writing systems are difficult to learn.  What my friends and many others don’t realize is that although most foreign writing systems, such as Chinese, are a great challenge, the Korean alphabet is an exception.

           At one time I also thought that Hangul would be very hard to learn, and that like the Japanese writing system, would take me several months to learn. I did not realize that originally, Koreans formed their words with borrowed Chinese characters. Because of the complexity and confusion created by using the Chinese alphabet for the Korean language, very few Koreans other than those in the upper classes could read or write (Korean Overseas Information Service 49). Hangul was invented in 1443 by scholars of the Hall of Worthies (a group created in 1420 that was in charge of scholarly writings) under the reign of King Sejong the Great. King Sejong originally called Hangul ‘hunmin cheong-eum’ or ‘proper sounds to instruct the people’ and first appeared in a document called by the same name, Hunmin Cheong-eum, in 1446. According to Sejong, the Korean alphabet was invented to give all of his subjects the ability to write in their own language without the use Chinese characters (Korean Overseas Information Service 66).

            The Hangul alphabet consists of 24 separate vowels and consonants. When constructing the alphabet, King Sejong and the scholars who assisted him based the sixteen initial consonants on five basic forms that were intended to mimic the position of the tongue in the mouth when making that particular sound (Korean Overseas Information Service 48) . Envisioning these movements of the tongue can help learners remember the sound behind the character they are reading. The Korean alphabet has clear writing rules that dictate how syllables are formed. By fitting letters into a box shape in either a clockwise or up and down order, Hangul makes writing efficient and easy to read. All spelling rules of Hangul are clear and concise, and they rarely change. These characters make the writing system very easy to master, even if you are not a native Korean speaker. For example, it took me about four hours to memorize the alphabet, and only a few months to become skilled enough to read it quickly, even if I couldn’t understand the meaning behind what I was reading. I have spoken with other English speakers who agree that Hangul is very simple to learn.

            In conclusion, Hangul may look intimidating to some, but it is a writing system that was designed for simplicity and sensibility, as a solution to the complicated Chinese characters that intimidate so many into not learning to read and write in an East Asian language.  

Works Cited

Korean Overseas Information Service. A Handbook of Korea. Seoul: Samhwa Printing Co., Ltd., 1993. Paper.