In Calgary, as in many major centers in North America, it seems that every second corner store is owned by Koreans.  When ever I find a foreign language store, I try to learn four words in the language from the proprietor.  These words are usually, "Hello", "Goodbye", "Please", and "Thank you".  I find this helps break the ice as many store owners seem to learn only the English necessary to complete a sale.  The preponderance of Korean stores made me decide to go a step further and learn a little bit more.  With this in mind I decided to figure out Korean script with some interesting consequences that I'd like to pass on.

    In the midst of bashing my head trying to learn the script I had what might be termed a "vision".  One of these damned characters looked like it was sticking its tongue out at me.  It turned out that this was the "S" character component.  It suddenly dawned on me that Korean is based on a script that is a linguist's dream; it is almost completely phonetic and, with a bit of imagination, it seems to be based on mouth, tongue, palate and glottis manipulations as viewed from the side.

    If you have ever tried to study Chinese characters you will have quickly realized that each sound can be represented by several different characters.  It is my feeling that Korean script was developed to try to simplify the Chinese Language learning curve.  One needs only hear a given Chinese word once and it can quickly be transcribed into Korean for ease of pronunciation.  Korean characters are extendable (though characters following my paradigm are not always recognized or used by Koreans themselves) and it is my feeling that the original design was for a one-to-one correspondence between Chinese and Korean characters for ease of transcription and checking.  The following is my take on Korean Character design:

    A circle in the Initial Sound position indicates a vowel beginning (i.e. mouth open, no consonant), a circle in the Final Sound position indicates an "NG" ending.  Here is a list of vowel sounds:

Ah - 아,  œh - 어,  ĭ - 이,  oh - 오,  oo - 우,  ŭ - 으

The long line seems to indicate a glottal stop, while the short line seems to indicate voice or sound of the vowel.  Whenever there are two parallel lines in the vowel, then the sound is a diphthong:

Ya - 야,  yœ - , yo - 요,  yoo - 유

ay - ,  uo (not used) -

ei - 에,  yei - 예,  oi - 외,  ui -의,  woe - 워

(etc, ad nauseum, hopefully you get the idea)

H is just an aspirated vowel:  hĭ - 히, hŭ - 흐, etc.

"Soft" consonants:  ma - 마 (mouth closed),  l(r)a - 라 (tongue at back),  na - 나,  no - 노  (tongue against teeth), s(z)uh - 쓰(tongue against teeth and blowing)

"Hard" consonants(tongue starts on palate):  kuh - 크, duh - 드, dduh(hard "th"?) - 뜨, guh - 그, gguh - 끄, tuh - 트, (note that consonants cannot stand alone and must be voiced with some kind of vowel sound and can be further "hardened" with a horizontal stroke/forced aspiration)

"Puffed" consonants:  buh - 브, p(f)uh - 프, bvuh - 쁘(start as "m" and open mouth while voicing)

"Hybrid" consonants:  shih (or sih) - 시, juh - 즈, djuh - 쯔, ch'uh - 츠

    Now the fun comes as the various elements can be put together to form an almost limitless array of characters.  As an example let me transcribe my name:

Ro ber t      Farr ies  becomes:

로 바 트    팰 잇

(note: I couldn't find a unicode "ries" character, so I dropped the second "r" in Farries, also my Korean friend suggested I drop the second "r" in Robert to ease pronunciation)

    What excites me about this is that Korean can become a "gateway" language for learning Chinese.  Many more complicated Korean nouns are just transcribed/accented Chinese words (eg. Qian Bi [铅筆], becomes Yon Pil [연필], or in English "Pencil").

    Another avenue I am exploring is the possibility that Korean style phonetics exist in certain Chinese characters.  One example is the similarity between my manufactured (not in use in Korean) ZUO character: 쑤 .  Which bears some striking similarities to some Chinese characters with the same pronunciation:

sit,   seat, left hand

 As well some characters, when "blurred" resemble Korean:

気 or   meaning air, or meaning beg look like 키 (if you have a warped imagination).  All 4 of them sound like "qi".

rfarries@telusplanet.net if you have questions or comments...

©2004 Robert Farries

main