๐ TIL the Korean alphabet Hangul is the only major writing system invented from scratch for its own language, and its letters are drawings of your mouth.
King Sejong the Great finished it in 1443 so common people could read and write. The consonants literally trace the speech organs: ใฑ is the tongue root blocking the throat, ใ is lips pressed together, ใ is the teeth.
The vowels encode sky, earth, and human: a dot, a horizontal line, and a vertical stroke.
The scholar class hated it. For 400 years it was treated as a script for women, monks, and commoners, until it went mainstream in the late 1800s. Hangul Day is now a national holiday in South Korea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hangul
#linguistics #history #korea
King Sejong the Great finished it in 1443 so common people could read and write. The consonants literally trace the speech organs: ใฑ is the tongue root blocking the throat, ใ is lips pressed together, ใ is the teeth.
The vowels encode sky, earth, and human: a dot, a horizontal line, and a vertical stroke.
The scholar class hated it. For 400 years it was treated as a script for women, monks, and commoners, until it went mainstream in the late 1800s. Hangul Day is now a national holiday in South Korea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Hangul
#linguistics #history #korea
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