Abstract
The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an “alphabetic syllabary” which employs many of the good and few of the bad features of an alphabet, a syllabary, and a logography. An alphabet can represent any word in the language, one phoneme at a time, but the phoneme-grapheme correspondence may be imperfect, and a single word may require a long array of letters. A syllable is a more stable unit of language than a phoneme, but a simple syllabary is practical only for a language with few different syllables. A logography, with a unique symbol for each morpheme, requires more complex and more numerous symbols. Korean text uses Hangul mixed with Chinese characters in a manner which aids reading.
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Reference notes
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© 1980 Plenum Press, New York
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Taylor, I. (1980). The Korean writing system: An alphabet? A syllabary? a logography?. In: Kolers, P.A., Wrolstad, M.E., Bouma, H. (eds) Processing of Visible Language. Nato Conference Series, vol 13. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1068-6_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-1068-6_5
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