Seoul part 4: On the beauty of making up a language
We hesitate in front of a Korean barbecue restaurant in Gangnam.
It was recommended by a local barista, who was so eager to help he almost led us here by hand. The place is pretty packed and the clientele is entirely Korean. All signs are in Korean and for all we know the menu could be written in Hangul.
There’s nothing quite as disorientating as being in a foreign place, surrounded by people speaking a mostly unintelligible language and by writings in an obscure alphabet. It always gives me perspective on how we take for granted the fact that people around us will understand us and that we will be understood by them. There’s so much common ground we share with people from our own culture and we usually don’t notice until that safety blanket is yanked from under our feet.
So, we hesitate in front of a Korean barbecue restaurant in Gangnam.
As intimidating as it may be, it’s our last night in Seoul and we reckon by now we probably got the hang of Korean barbecue. We get in.
The Korean alphabet is called Hangul (한글) and it was introduced in the 15th century by Sejong the Great of the Joseon Dynasty (who also has a giant statue in one of the most central roads in Seoul).
Note that Hangul is an alphabet, not a language. As far as I can tell, the language is called Hangungmal (한국말), at least in South Korea.
It’s essentially a made up alphabet, created to spread literacy among the population. Before it was introduced, Chinese characters were used and their complication limited writing to the aristocracy.
Despite Hangul’s long history, the definitive modern orthography was only published in 1946 and the alphabet itself went in and out of use throughout the centuries.
Interesting to note that, during the Japanese Imperial Period, the official language of Korea was Japanese. Japanese is a fascinating, quirky and beautiful language, but its mix of kanji, katakana and hiragana is positively mad compared to the elegant simplicity of Hangul.
The alphabet is very interesting and it follows some pretty regular, well-thought-of rules. Letters are grouped in blocks, which is something I’ve never seen before. Blocks are 2 or 3 letters long. The second letter is always a vowel, while the others are always consonants.
As an example, the word “Hangul” is made of 6 letters: ㅎ (h), ㅏ (a), ㄴ (n), ㄱ (g/k), ㅡ (eu), ㄹ (l/r) which combine in two blocks to give us: 한글. Words in Hangul are compact and elegant, mixing characteristics of logographic and phonographic, linear alphabets.
The elegance of Hangul also resides in the design of the letters, which is informed by the way they are pronounced. I won’t go into details here but, as an example, imagine you’re looking at a mouth from the side. Try to pronounce the letters n (ㄴ), g (ㄱ) or r (ㄹ) and you’ll see how the shape of the letter is a stylised version of the shape of your tongue.
Not only that: some letters can be derived from others according to very simple rules. Vowels can be iotised by adding a stroke: from a (ㅏ) you get ya (ㅑ), from o (ㅗ) you get yo (ㅛ) and so on. Consonants can be doubled to get a stronger sound: from g (ㄱ) you get gg (ㄲ), from s (ㅅ) you get ss (ㅆ) and so on.
This makes Hangul a relatively easy alphabet to learn. In fact, I managed to learn some of it before going to Korea and it was fun trying to decipher simple words around the city.
Of course, Hangul is not very useful unless you also learn the language and the meaning of what you’re reading, but it’s definitely the first step. And it’s always fascinating to get a glimpse into the workings of a foreign alphabet.
By the way, the meal in the barbecue restaurant was excellent, they offered us an old and battered english menu, the waiting staff spoke passable english and I ate entirely too much Kimchi (김치).
The next entry in my diary is going to be on size. The previous entry, for the curious, talks about the Korean War.
