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Scientific Brilliance
Home>Hangeul>About Hangeul
- [ By Lee Byeong-guk (Professor of Computer and Information Engineering, Dongseo University) ]
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Hangeul is written in blocks that bring together different letters to form syllables. A consonant is written first, and a vowel is written to its right or beneath it, while the ending-consonant - when applicable - is written underneath both the consonant and the vowel. This is the general rule for block writing in Hangeul. Modern-day Hangeul can denote 11,172 different syllables [19 consonants * 21 vowels * (27 ending-consonants + 1 case of a no ending-consonant)], but the existing system allows for the use of 8,873 syllables, of which 2,350 are used 99.9% of the time.
In contrast to Hangeul, which can represent some 8,800 different sounds, Japanese and Chinese characters are known to be able to represent 300 and 400 different sounds, respectively. For example, McDonald’s Hangeul representation is pronounced as “Maek-do-nal-deu,” quite similar to the English pronunciation. However, the Hanzi representation is pronounced as “Mai-dang-row,” and the Katakana representation is pronounced as “Ma-kku-do-na-reu-do.” This is a simple demonstration of Hangeul’s unmatchable ability with regard to phonetic representation.
- When personal computers were first introduced within Korea in the 1980s, the English-language software system and keyboard were used as they were because only a few highly-educated people had access to computers to begin with. However, as computers became a more widely distributed commodity, the need for a Korean-language processing program and a Hangeul keyboard grew. At the time, computers based on the Roman alphabet ran on the 1-byte system, on which the maximum number of characters for representation was 256, so Hangeul could not be used with it.
- A number of Hangeul processing methods have been suggested since. The two-mode keyboard selected in 1982 has become standardized, and the Hangeul processing code has gone through various transformations, from multi-byte Hangeul to 3-byte Hangeul, 7-bit and 2-byte completed Hangeul, and 2-byte combination Hangeul, and 2-byte completed Hangeul. At the end, the introduction of the Unicode, which successfully integrated various character groups from across the world, put an end to the dispute over Hangeul processing methods.
- With the exception of PCs, it is much easier to enter Hangeul than any other language characters using the mobile phone keypad. Mobile phone keypads list the English alphabet simply in the ascending order, and users have to press the same key several times just to enter one character more often than not. But Hangeul’s block writing characteristics make it much easier to enter with merely 12 keys on a mobile phone than Chinese, English, and Japanese, despite the fact that Hangeul can represent a lot more different sounds than others.
- Hangeul entry technology on a mobile phone may seem simple, but it has been technology perfected through numerous revisions to overcome various errors and challenges arising in everyday use. The most commonly used options are “Cheonjiin” of Samsung Electronics and “ezHangeul” of LG Electronics. In its earlier days, Cheonjiin was praised for being the most innovative and convenient method for Hangeul entry. ezHangeul, which soon followed in its wake, overcame the limitation of being a simple character entry system; it made the entry of 100 characters per minute possible, thereby enabling users to attain a texting speed similar to that of a PC user.
Hangeul, first invented under the name Hunmin Jeongeum by King Sejong in September 1446 (28th year of King Sejong’s reign) by the lunar calendar, has proven itself as a scientific character system suitable for the current age of digital information.
- Curriculum vitae [ Lee Byeong-guk ]
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- Professor, Computer and Information Engineering, Dongseo University
- Senior researcher at Dacom R &D Center
- Research professor at University of Oslo, Norway
