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- Numerous languages such as French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, etc., use the Roman alphabet, thus the phonetic value of each letter differs according to culture. For example, in some countries, the letter 'h' is not pronounced. Some cultures pronounce the letter 'j' as a semivowel, while others pronounce it as a frictional or affricate sound. If we look at English, the letter 'a' is pronounced differently in the words 'apple', 'April', 'account', 'all', and 'art'. On the contrary, there is a fixed pronunciation for each letter in Hangeul. The relationship between letter and pronunciation comes into accord. Of course, exceptions do exist in Hangeul: 'ㅢ' is pronounced as 'e'. However, all other letters have a fixed pronunciation, thus there is no need to look at phonetic signs.
- Double finals are sometimes pronounced differently than they are written. When the finals 'ㄳ', 'ㄵ', 'ㄶ', 'ㄺ', 'ㄻ', 'ㄼ', 'ㄽ', 'ㄾ', 'ㄿ', 'ㅀ', and 'ㅄ', precede a vowel, they are fully pronounced; however, when they precede a consonant, only one sound of the two letters forming the consonant is pronounced. Which one of the two letters is pronounced depends on the final as well as on the word. The finals are not pronounced as they are written so that particular words have fixed spellings. If the finals were written phonetically, it would be difficult to derive the root of each word.
- For example, let’s look at the word '젊다 (jeomta)', meaning young. If we wrote variations of this word simply based on sound, they would be '점따 (jeomta)', '점꼬 (jeomkko)', and '절므니까 (jeolmeunika)'. We wouldn’t have to use any complex-looking double finals. However, the disadvantage to this approach would be that it is difficult to derive the meaning, or the root, of a word when the spelling differs. That is why we retain the final, at the cost of changing the pronunciation, and spell these words '젊다', '젊고', and '젊으니까', respectively.
- There are several other additional advantages to Hangeul. One of the unique features of Hangeul is that the letters are grouped into syllables. If we wrote the word '한글 (Hangeul)' in a straight line and not by syllable, it would be written as such: 'ㅎㅏㄴㄱㅡㄹ'. It's clear that it’s easier to understand the word when it's grouped into syllables. Moreover, with more than half of the Korean vocabulary derived from Chinese, it is far easier to understand the meaning of a word when the syllables constituting Chinese characters are grouped into one.
- Since words are formed by grouped syllables, Hangeul can be written both horizontally and vertically. In the case of languages using the Roman alphabet like English, French and German, only horizontal writing is possible.
- An important aspect of Hangeul is its advantage in mechanization and informatization. These days, along with the circulation of information via computers, communication is possible via text messaging. In the case of English, in order to type abc, 'a', 'b', and 'c' must each be pressed once. The keypads must be pressed twice on average. However, with Korean, the keypad is pressed once for normal sounds, twice for aspirated sounds and three times for fortes. As the frequency of normal sounds is higher than aspirated sounds and fortes, we can say that the input speed of Hangeul is faster than that of the Roman alphabet. With Chinese writing, there are so many characters that it is impossible to arrange them on keypads; the only way is to input Roman letters, but have them display on the screen as Chinese writing. Various input methods are being developed for Chinese characters, thus it’s not impossible to send text messages in Chinese. However, Hangeul letters can be utilized in the right away to ensure convenient messaging.
