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Hangul is the native script of Korea, created in the mid fifteenth century under King Sejong, as both a complement and an alternative to the logographic Sino-Korean ''hanja''. Initially denounced by the educated class as ''eonmun'' (vernacular writing), it only became the primary Korean script following independence from Japan in the mid-20th century.〔Fischer, pp. 190, 193.〕 Hangul is a featural alphabet written in morpho-syllabic blocks, and was designed for both the Korean and Chinese languages, though the letters specific to Chinese are now obsolete. Each block consists of at least one consonant letter and one vowel letter. When promulgated, the blocks reflected the morphology of Korean, but for most of the fifteenth century they were organized into syllables. In the twentieth century the morpho-syllabic tradition was revived. The blocks were traditionally written in vertical columns from top to bottom, although they are now commonly written in horizontal rows from left to right as well. Spacing has been introduced to separate words in the Western fashion, and punctuation to indicate clauses and sentences, so that hangul now transcribes Korean at the levels of feature, segment, syllable, morpheme, word, clause, and sentence. However, the suprasegmental features of tone and vowel length, seen as single and double tick marks to the left of the syllabic blocks in the image in the next section, have been dropped. Six new letters, including two of Sejong's which had become obsolete, were introduced in North Korea in 1948 in order to make hangul a perfect morphophonological fit to the Korean language, but they were soon discarded. While hangul contains a large component of iconic invention, it may also have a core that is historically related to the alphabets of Central Asia, and therefore cognate with the Latin alphabet, with the letters ㅂ ''b'', ㄱ ''g'', ㄷ ''d'', and ㄹ ''l'' distantly related to Latin B, C, D, and L. ==Historical record== Hangul was promulgated by the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty, Sejong the Great. Sejong's scholarly institute, the Hall of Worthies, is often credited with the work, and at least one of its scholars was heavily involved in its creation, but it appears to have also been a personal project of Sejong. The project was completed in late 1443 or early 1444 and published in 1446 in a document titled ''Hunmin jeong-eum'' "The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People", after which the alphabet itself was named. Sejong explained that he created the new script because the existing ''idu'' system, based on Chinese characters, was not a good fit for the Korean language and were so difficult that only privileged male aristocrats ''(yangban)'' could afford the time and education to learn to read and write fluently. The vast majority of Koreans were left effectively illiterate. Hangul, on the other hand, was designed so that even a commoner with little education could learn to read and write: "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."〔''Hunmin jeong-eum haerye,'' postface of Jeong Inji, p. 27a, translation from Ledyard (1998:258).〕 Except for the obsolete palatal stops, all 36 initials in the Chinese inventory had hangul equivalents: During the second half of the fifteenth century, hangul was used primarily by women and the undereducated. It faced heavy opposition from Confucian scholars educated in Chinese, notably Choe Manri, who believed ''hanja'' to be the only legitimate writing system. Later kings too were hostile. King Yeonsangun forbade use of hangul in 1504, during a series of palace purges, after commoners made hangul posters mocking him, and King Jungjong abolished the Hangul Ministry in 1506. The account of the design of hangul was lost, and hangul would not return to common use until the independence of Korea after World War II. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Origin of hangul」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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