Writing System
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Formerly, the languages of the Korean peninsula were written using hanja, called hyangchal or idu: the use of Chinese characters either as rebuses to stand for Korean words, or as synonyms for those words. Writing was confined to the ruling elite, who most often wrote only in Classical Chinese. Sejong the Great promulgated the Korean alphabet in 1446. Korean is now written almost exclusively in hangul. While South Korean schools still teach 1,800 hanja, North Korea abolished hanja decades ago. Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's symbols and their canonical IPA values:
Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese. Korean punctuation marks are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns, from top to bottom, right to left, but is now usually written in rows, from left to right, top to bottom. Read more about this topic: Korean Language Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or system:“Scott took LITERATURE so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.” “Whoever places his trust into a system will soon be without a home. While you are building your third story, the two lower ones have already been dismantled.” Related Subjects
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