« Choking Portland with Light Rail | Main | The Internet has brought back something that we thought was dead and that is rentier capitalism. »

August 8, 2016

The King's Letters

kingsletters.jpg

Regardless of whether Sejong came up with it all single-handedly, the system was clever, and had two features that were essentially unique among writing systems.
One was that many of the shapes of the consonant symbols were meant to imitate what the tongue and the lips do in producing the corresponding sounds. For instance, ᄆ stands for the sound /m/, with the lips pressed together.ᄂ is /n/, with the tip of the tongue reaching upwards behind the top teeth; ᄀ is /k/, with the back of the tongue pressing upwards and briefly stopping the airflow. Consonants that share a tongue position were given related shapes. For instance, because /p/ is made with the lips together the same way /m/ is, it was assigned ᄇ. And because /t/ is produced with the tongue pressed behind the top teeth as /n/ is, it got the symbol ᄃ. • Damn Interesting

Posted by gerardvanderleun at August 8, 2016 10:27 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

Oh, and I used to know Randal O'Toole. My late husband and I were in a bicycle co-op with him and his wife back in the 70s. It was funny when I found out that he was still around and opposed to mass transit. He's certainly articulate about it.

Posted by: Teri Pittman [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 8, 2016 12:40 PM

Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)