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2009-08-07 -Short Attention Span Theater-

Indonesian tribe to adopt Korean alphabet

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Posted by Fred 2009-08-07 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top

#1 When working in Korea, I found the need to learn to read the language. I was surprised at how quickly I was able to learn to read signs, etc. Plus I had a whole country that was delighted to help, and I have not found Koreans otherwise overly well endowed in the helping out of others category. The next step, character group comprehension and cross-linking to English took longer, but the basic structure of the language was sound. Much easier than Japanese, and much much easier than Chinese. Might also be easier than English. My 2 cents.

Posted by Whiskey Mike 2009-08-07 04:12|| 2009-08-07 04:12|| Front Page Top

#2 IIRC, being phonetic (a relatively small number of symbols signifying a particular sound) is unique in Asia, being credited as the creation of one of their early kings. Vietnamese also has an alphabet, derived from the western alphabet and created by a French scholar-priest early in the Colonial period. Although widely used, Chinese and Japanese are pictographic - and so there are thousands of specific symbols - which makes it very difficult to learn, and costly to typeset!

Posted by Sgt. Mom">Sgt. Mom 2009-08-07 08:47|| http://www.celiahayes.com]">[http://www.celiahayes.com] 2009-08-07 08:47|| Front Page Top

#3 IIRC, being phonetic (a relatively small number of symbols signifying a particular sound) is unique in Asia

Sorry Mom, you forgot about my neighbors, the Cherokee.

Posted by Parabellum 2009-08-07 08:57|| http://sidemeat.wordpress.com/]">[http://sidemeat.wordpress.com/] 2009-08-07 08:57|| Front Page Top

#4 Meant unique in Asia, Parabellum - where Chinese pictograms usually rule. I wasn't forgetting the Cherokee. Just that they weren't living in Asia when a very clever member of the tribe worked out an alphabet for their language.

Posted by Sgt. Mom">Sgt. Mom 2009-08-07 10:56|| http://www.celiahayes.com]">[http://www.celiahayes.com] 2009-08-07 10:56|| Front Page Top

#5 CIA-CIA tribe? doubly incompetent

Posted by Slomoter Sproing9775 2009-08-07 13:02|| 2009-08-07 13:02|| Front Page Top

#6 I hear their native dances are spectacular.

Posted by Grunter 2009-08-07 16:20|| 2009-08-07 16:20|| Front Page Top

#7 Indonesian tribe to adopt Korean alphabet ...

Probably Hyundai gave them fleet prices on vehicle purchases.

Posted by BigEd 2009-08-07 16:37|| 2009-08-07 16:37|| Front Page Top

#8 --- Phonetic writing has an inherent advantage over pictographic writing, when a couple dozen characters can be used to generate every possible utterance, vs. needing to memorize several thousand pictographs for basic written communication. English started out phonetic, but as it evolved & sucked in elements from other languages, written English became less & less phonetic in character. So, dyslexics have a really hard time with literacy in English. Written Italian puts great emphasis on matching characters to pronunciation, so there are far fewer dyslexic Italian children.
--- Some of the old Grecian alphabetical characters were actually shaped to picture the way they were pronounced: the character for "O-mega" is a pictograph of the shape of your mouth as you are saying the sound, and the character for "theta" looks like your tongue placed below your incisors to make the sound of the "th" sound signified. If you use your imagination, a wide open mouth saying "Aaah" resembles a capital "A".
--- China has been literate for so long, and the country is so large, that by now different spoken languages have evolved and are not mutually intelligible, so a pictographic language has the advantage of being useful when Chinese speaking different languages want to communicate. Plays on words and musical language usages like poetry may not work too well in those cases.
--- There are only so many sounds human beings can produce with their vocal tract. Matching any alphabet to any verbal utterance is just arbitrary, there is no reason the Latin alphabet couldn't have been used for the Cia-Cia tribe, just as long as a given combination of characters is consistently used to match the sounds of their language.
--- In the US, some missionaries to the Indians found they were able to teach adult Indians to read in their tribal languages rather easily using the Latin alphabet to more or less match the sounds of the native language. There were other instances of natives in the USA(besides Cherokees) devising their own alphabets and creating their own written languages. Unfortunately the problem for the tribes was not illiteracy, but inability to communicate in English. Teaching spoken English to natives was always difficult. Being literate in a language understood by only a few thousand people isn't much of an advantage in this crowded world.

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2009-08-07 17:01|| 2009-08-07 17:01|| Front Page Top

#9 Being literate in a language understood by only a few thousand people isn't much of an advantage in this crowded world.

Wind-Talkers.

Posted by Pappy 2009-08-07 21:52|| 2009-08-07 21:52|| Front Page Top

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