Pat here. Hangul is the written Korean alphabet, but you already know that, right? I’ve become fascinated by Hangul since I watched Deep Rooted Tree, a 2011 Kdrama about the creation of the modern Korean alphabet.
Big disclaimer here. I don’t begin to understand the finer points of language. When the discussion includes words like orthography and glottal stops, my eyes glaze over. I’m thinking Judy, my Korean school dropout buddy (sorry, Judy!) would agree with me on this.
The amazing thing about Hangul is that it was created in 1443! Do you know any other modern language that is only 500-600 years old? I don’t. I’m positively swooning about this.
Deep Rooted Tree is about other things as well. True to Kdrama style, there is a love story, villainy, tears, and endless rounds of tea sipping and soju imbibing. Song Joong-ki of Descendants of the Sun even has a role. But the prevailing theme of the story is the genius of Sejong the Great, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, who developed Hangul so lower class Koreans could become literate. Even though both nobles and lower classes were speaking Korean, only the upper classes were reading the language of the day, which was Chinese. It simply was too time consuming and complicated for the common person to have the time to absorb it.
King Sejong who invented the Korean Alphabet.... big statue in the middle of Seoul so you can't miss it!
Today as I was thinking about writing this post, the most fascinating article appeared in The New York Times about the Cia-Cia tribe of Indonesia. This group of cultural Indonesians has no written script and are adapting Hangul to become uniquely theirs. Because Hangul is phonetically based, it’s been a success but not without its detractors. Politics being what it is, there is always room for dissension, right?
Does this spur me on to study Hangul? Using Judy as my role model, I’m thinking…I’m thinking…
What I find most interesting is that the actual shape of the letters reflect the shape of one's mouth when speaking the language; I'm amazed that King Sejong came up with this. Pat and I discussed this Kdrama a couple of times. She would invariably ask me 'do you remember....' and I would have no clue what she was talking about. The ONLY thing that I noticed or paid attention to in this show was the development of the Alphabet. Okay, maybe I noticed the actors too...
Judy, I know you remember the male ones. Just saying…
Did you know something even more surprising?
Even though Hangul was invented about 600 years ago, it’s only been widely used by everyone for about 100 years. I can help you learn Korean. ㅎㅎㅎ
ㅎㅎㅎ -> hahaha
ㅋㅋ -> kekeke
ㅍㅎㅎㅎ -> LOL
I've had Deep Rooted Tree on my radar -- that is, my watchlist -- for some time, since I'm interested in language and admire King Sejong's development of Hangul so that everyone could be literate. But now, having fallen in love with actor Han Seok-kyu in Dr. Romantic, who plays King Sejong in Deep Rooted Tree, I definitely have to watch it!