I answered some questions about learning Korean that Shanna from Hanguk Drama sent me. You can see her post over here. If you’ve learned Korean, consider answering her questions. It’s always great to hear about other people’s experiences.
Tag Archives: Hangul
Practice texting in Korean online!
Posted by mstrum
on August 17, 2009
18 comments
Those of you who’ve been following my blog for a long time know I’ve been working on a HUGE project called Hangeul Assistant over on the Korean Wiki Project. Up until now, the main things you can do are:
- Type Korean on ANY computer exactly like you would on a Korean computer (with a visual Keyboard which you can either click the keys or just view it as a reference while typing)
- Conjugate verbs
- See pronunciation changes
Well, now I’ve started working on the last main feature which has, up until now, been completely missing. What’s the last piece of the puzzle? You’ve guessed it, texting! Now, you can type in Korean using Hangeul Assistant just like you would on a Korean cellphone. Currently, only the “Sky” system is implemented, but I’m planning on including all cellphone systems in the future. I’d enjoy any feedback y’all have, especially if you’ve used a SKY phone and know that something needs to be fixed.
Try it below:
For more information, check out the Hangeul Assistant page over on the Korean Wiki Project!
A dable into the history of Hangeul
Posted by mstrum
on May 22, 2009
2 comments
During the time between classes I decided to drop by the U of U library to see how their Korean collection was. I found three books which discussed the history of Hangeul so I decided to sit down and skim through them. I learned some pretty interesting things.
There have been multiple systems used by the Koreans have used to make sense of documents written in Chinese characters before Hangeul became prevalent. From what I saw, there were three systems that were used at one time or another. Idu used special characters to represent Korean endings and grammatical markers which were tagged onto Chinese characters. Hyangchal took Korean phrases and wrote them using Chinese to represent the Korean sounds. Gugyeol took the opposite approach from Hyangchal by going from Chinese into Korean. Chinese characters kept their original order with special subsets of Chinese characters added on them to denote grammatical terms. Finally, Hangeul was created to finally give Korean it’s own writing system rather than using a subset of Chinese.
When what we call 한글 was first invented, there were two very important documents that explained it called 훈민정음 and 훈민정음 해례. The second has a famous quote about how easy it is to learn: “A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.” I would definitely agree with this, Hangeul itself is so easy that there’s no excuse for ANYONE to use romanization. You can’t even image how much I HATE romanized Korean. Many of the books on that shelf used romanized Korean exclusively, and I can tell you it was ugly and confusing as heck. Whoever thought it would be good to learn Korean through English needs to rethink their strategy. If I could gather all those books together and burn them I would. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again to those learning Hangeul. DON’T. USE. ROMANIZATION.
Anyways, getting back on track. There have been a lot of changes over the centuries. Here are some of the more interesting characters that have been dropped (Don’t even ask me how to pronounce them.):
ᄙ, ㅹ, ᄽ, ᄿ, ᇮ, ᅏ, ᅑ, ㆅ, ᄛ, ㅱ, ㅸ, ᄼ, ᄾ, ㅿ, ㆁ, ᅎ, ᅐ, ᅔ, ᅕ, ㆄ, ㆆ, ᇄ, ㅩ, ᇏ, ᇑ, ᇒ, ㅫ, ᇔ, ᇕ, ᇖ, ᇞ, ㅴ, ㅵ, ᄤ, ᄥ, ᄦ, ᄳ, ᄴ, ᅷ, ᅸ, ᅹ, ᅼ, ᅽ, ᅾ, ᅿ, ᆀ, ᆁ, ᆂ, ᆃ, ㆇ, ㆈ, ᆆ, ᆇ, ㆉ, ᆉ, ᆊ, ᆋ, ᆌ, ᆍ, ᆎ, ᆏ, ᆐ, ㆊ, ㆋ, ᆓ, ㆌ, ᆕ, ᆖ, ᆗ, ᆘ, ᆙ, ㆎ (originally vowels only had one line with one or more dots to denote which vowel it was)
Hangeul wasn’t even called ‘한글’ (meaning great script) until around 1910. Up until that time, it was called 언문 (vulgar script). The man attributed to naming it 한글, 주시경, apparently hated it being called the vulgar script. As you can imagine, the newer name really caught on with the people. Around the same time, the term 한 was becoming popular to denote Korean things.
The books go much more deeper than just these points, but you can get the gist of it in this post (hopefully). Anyways, if you’re interesting in learning more about how the Korean language developed from a spoken language to finally having it’s own written script, check out Wikipedia’s vast knowledge base or see if your l0ocal library has books on Korean.
Hangeul Assistant 0.5 (Added Keyboard)
Posted by mstrum
on April 26, 2009
1 comment
Just a little note, I have released another version of the Hangeul Assistant over on the Korean Wiki Project. The major feature this time was a virtual keyboard. You can either click the buttons on the screen or just type naturally on your keyboard and it’ll function just like Korean IME (Input Method Editor), except without the need for it to be installed. It’s great if you’re on someone else’s computer who doesn’t have Korean input or if you’re just learning how to type (it shows the English and Korean letters). Any feedback is greatly appreciated, I’m sure there’s some bugs I haven’t hammered out yet.
One funny thing, my custom keyboard is a lot faster than if you use Korean IME. Maybe the built in Korean IME causes a lot of processing to be done in flash. The method I have chosen to implement this is fairly lightweight, everything has been written from scratch. Try using your regular Korean IME inside the program and then switch back to english and try the keyboard. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Here is the current version (note, this will update automatically to the latest version so it might be above 0.5):
What an Expat Manager Really Needs to Know about Korean History (MBIK 1)
Posted by mstrum
on January 6, 2009
No comments
I’m just going to make some notes and observations that I find interesting as I read each chapter of Mastering Business in Korean, so don’t expect an exhaustive review.
The first chapter is a brief history of Korea that the author says Koreans might expect people to know about and would help with their relations.
I had always assumed 한글 was adopted right from the get go. I guess 한글 was loathed for a while. It says the educated people disregarded 한글 because “even the women could learn it.” I remember seeing how women couldn’t go to school in the drama, 대장금, so I guess that was an accurate portrayal. The author states that 한글 became widely adopted once the bible was translated by Christian missionaries in the late 19th century.
Another interesting fact was that Pyongyang (current capital of North Korea) was seen as the Christian capital of Korea and Seoul (current capital of South Korea) was the hot spot for debate between the left and the right, so the U.S. and Soviet Russia seemed to have the wrong halves of Korea after World War II.
One thing that seems a little backwards in retrospect is that the U.S. forces tried to keep South Korea’s army very small prior to the Korean war. They felt their job was to stop South Korea from trying to invade the north. This is similar to their policy in Japan, though South Korea was in more danger of being invaded. Of course, Soviet Russia helped North Korea build up invasion forces during this time. Wow, smart move on our part 
. I have to wonder how much intelligence we compiled together at the time and if we knew that Soviet Russia was building up the North Korean forces.
North Korea’s history doesn’t have much to say about the 500,000 Chinese that died to push the U.S. forces back down to Seoul (which later retreated to the 38th parallel). I’d say that’s in line with their policy of trying to show how independent they are from other nations and how much Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il are gods on Earth.
Go to the next chapter, Korean Hearts and Minds: Traditional Yet Changing or select a chapter.
