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Scientific Brilliance
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- Hangeul is a writing system that was made by thoroughly analyzing the phonological structure of the Korean language. Hangeul consonants and vowels are taken for granted today; however, it must have been quite a difficult job before the existence of Hangeul, to distinguish all of the consonants and the vowels. The fact that this distinction exists, as well as the clear relationship between all phonemes prove what a scientific writing system Hangeul is.
- There are not many examples of writing systems that have acheived such a clear distinction between consonants and vowels as the Hangeul system. Moreover, there are no known systems that have modeled letters from the shape of the tongue, mouth and teeth; such as the modeling of the Hangeul consonants.
- Aspirated sounds such as 'ㅊ,' 'ㅋ,' 'ㅌ,' and 'ㅍ' were created by adding a horizontal stroke to existing consonants; they were aspirated derivatives of 'ㅈ,' 'ㄱ,' 'ㄷ' and 'ㅂ,' respectively. This is an excellent example of how scientific the writing system of Hangeul is. That is why some scholars refer to Hangeul not only as a phonetic writing system, but also a featural writing system.
- Numerous scholars have made assessments of Hangeul. In East Asia: The Great Tradition, co-written by Professor Edwin O. Reichauer and Professor John K. Fairbank of Harvard University, Hangeul is theorized to be the most scientific writing system known today. In 1964, Professor Fritz Vos of Leiden University in the Netherlands wrote in his thesis that Hangeul was the most superior alphabet system in the world. In 1966, Professor James D. McCawley subscribed to Professor Vos' opinion in the worldwide renowned journal Language, Vol. 42, No. 1. Geoffrey Sampson coined the term 'featural system' in his book Writing Systems (1985) and uses Hangeul as an example. It shows that he acknowledged Hangeul as having unique features that were incomparable with any other phonetic writing system. Sampson even commented that Hangeul was one of the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind. Noble Prize Winner Pearl Buck wrote in the preface of her novel The Living Reed (1963) that Hangeul was the greatest simple script in the world.
- In the June 1994 issue of the magazine Discovery, Professor Jared Diamond of the University of California wrote that Hangeul is assessed by scholars as a great writing system, and went so far as to describe it as “ultrarational.” In his book Alpha Beta (2001), UK historian John Man talked about numerous writing systems of the world. He commented that, despite the greatness of Hangeul, its application was limited because the ruling class was reluctant to use it.
