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[Korean] Learning the alphabet
10 sats \ 2 comments \ @south_korea_ln 1 Jan language_learning
The Korean alphabet, referred to as Hangeul, is extremely easy to learn. It contains nearly the same number of letters as English, so even though it looks exotic, it is very different from and much simpler than Chinese where each character has a different meaning.
Fun fact: due to its scientific and logical construct, Hangeul have even been used in Africa. I don't know how much is missionary propaganda, but it illustrates how easy it is to learn this writing system.
If you're tempted to get to it yourself, I recommend this course on memrise or to read through these notes from the excellent howtostudykorean.com website.
You can understand the logic in a day, and with a week of daily practice, you'll be able to read it. Understanding will be a next step.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @398ja 1 Jan
Very interesting. I find it fascinating that the Korean alphabet can be used as a writing system for Indonesians and African tribal languages.
On a different note, I've always believed that language is for perpetuating a culture. I think both are intertwined and cannot exist in isolation. The notion that individuals from distant cultural backgrounds, and residing in foreign lands, would learn for example Korean or Mandarin etc, has never resonated with me...
Also, does learning new languages have a future in this era of AI?
Would love to hear other opinions on this.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @south_korea_ln OP 2 Jan
I agree on your "different note". Language is very much related to the culture. Introducing them in other place does not really make sense, other than for the scientific curiosity. There is a reason Esperanto never really took off.
As for your question, if learning new languages has a future, I would say definitely for the next 10 years. Beyond that, it's of course hard to predict. But as you say yourself, language is very much intertwined with the culture... so to really understand a culture, you also need to learn that language. When I was in Spain, having an AI translation tool might have helped me in daily interactions, it would not have resolved the issue that the real interactions and understanding of the people cannot happen without knowing Spanish. Alos, learning a language is fun.
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