The Korean instructors to be sent to Indonesia will teach Hangeul and Korean to the local school teachers, while working on documentation of the Jjia Jjia tribe's culture, history and folktales.
"The best way is to bring the (Indonesian) teachers to Korea and offer them an official Korean education like we did to Abidin, but since they might not be comfortable with the cold weather here, we decided to send our teachers there," said Kim Joo-won, the head of the Hunminjeongeum Society.
The society said it is recruiting qualified teachers who can adapt in Baubau smoothly - those who understand a local culture and focus on offering education to local people.
I kept wondering, while reading through the articles and columns in the local paper, is how an alphabet tied to the Korean language and Korean culture would fit in with foreign ones, and how using the alphabet as a way to globalize Korea will serve the interests of people in other countries.
Furthermore, as I wrote when we read last year about Koreans trying to globalize their alphabet, and about Indonesians in Bau-Bau being receptive to it, it's a perfectly fine system for the Korean language, but it sucks if you're trying to write "f," "v," "l," "r," or "z." And, as many others have said, learning Hangeul will help preserve the language among those in the city who learn how to read it, but it will do nothing to help communication with the outside world. But then again, were communication with the outside world a priority they likely would have come up with a written language before.
16 comments:
I never understood the point of bringing up the "f," "v," et al. It's an alphabet for a different language so of course there are phonemes on either side that can't be represented by the other alphabet.
It is strange that the tribe would choose Hangeul, a language so restricted in its use in the world, but without knowing their language and considerations, who am I to judge. Of course, it does smell fishy and I wonder if there weren't other pressures and deals made for the sake of an agenda: "globalizing Hangeul."
JS:
But when Koreans import words that have those sounds, it's awkward when they can't write or say them. I smiled when my relatives took me out to a VIPS steakhouse, and phoned in driving directions for "beeps".
Like JS says, without understanding that tribe's language it's not entirely possible to know why they would adopt Hangeul as their written script. That said, the last paragraph in the Herald story should give us a clue and it doesn't seem to have much to do with the inherent superiority of the Korean script, but rather baser, more practical reasons:
"The Indonesian city is keen to help its people get a job at Korean firms, taking advantage of the Hangeul education they receive, while pursuing mutual interests with Korean partners through joint investment and cooperation regarding its tourism and natural resources, the mayor said."
Hard to argue with that. And if the locals turn out to not give a fig about the script, well, it wouldn't be the first time missionaries were played by people looking to improve their material life by pretending to be converts.
Perhaps they also have a language that would best be represented by a syllabic writing system with a logical script like Hangeul, as opposed to the less efficient Japanese kana systems.
@The Sanity Inspector - But what JS is saying is that while Koreans pronounce ㄱ as what we might Romanize 'k' or 'g', the Indonesian tribe might use it to represent a different sound all together.
For one, while Hangeul has characters to represent glottalized sounds (all of the 쌍 characters like ㄲ, ㅆ, ㅃ, etc.), perhaps the Indonesian tribe doesn't need those and can apply them differently. For example, maybe ㅃ can represent 'v'.
I can't imagine how this will work, unless the tribe's language is as simple as Korea's.
Hangul is a simple alphabet for a simple people. The Koreans don't give a shit less about that tribe and probably makes jokes about them being brown little monkeys straight to their faces (in Korean). Koreans want to feel good about Korea and this gives them a big collective woody.
Watch it with the "simple people" talk, 1994.
Something to keep in mind is that an alphabet is not a stagnant entity, impervious to change. New letters can be added as the situation demands.
Look at the languages that use Latin-derived alphabets -- in French there are the letters ç, é, etc.; German has/had ß, ö, etc.; Icelandic includes use of Ð/ð and Þ/þ. There are other examples as well (Portuguese, Vietnamese, et. al). None of those letters show up in English but all of these languages share the same roots.
And then go take a look at Cyrillic -- it's used for Cyrillic, Uralic, Caucasian, and other Indo-European language families. In each case new letters were added to convey sounds that aren't represented by letters in the original script. The letter Г shows up in all of those languages, but Ukrainian added Ґ, Macedonian added Ѓ, and Tajik added Ғ for similar sounds that couldn't be incorporated under Г. I see no reason why non-Korean languages would be tied to only using the Korean letters currently in use.
Which brings up another point, as well. The Korean alphabet actually has several letters (jamo) that fell out of use. I've asked a few people about this and no one has been able to give me an answer, but at one point Korean did have letters approximating the sounds of /f/ (ㆄ), /ff/ or [v] (ㅹ), and /z/ or [ʝ͂] (ㅿ). I see no reason why these (and the couple of others I didn't list) can't be re-incorporated into the language to represent sounds not currently covered by the contemporary alphabet. (For that matter, I'd love to see them re-introduced within Korea, too, to help with pronouncing loan words.)
Maybe the tribe's language can be covered with the modern Korean alphabet. If not, there's no international rule that says they can't add new letters to make the alphabet meet their needs.
samedi: That's a good point. I would like to add, however, that perhaps a faster way towards a more accurate pronunciation of loan words would be through the education side of things, and there are plenty of issues that need to be addressed in that arena. Additionally, fewer inaccurate uses in pop culture/media would probably help as well.
My reasoning is that English words, when needed in speech or written word, should be written with the English alphabet. I don't necessarily see a need to find an accurate way to represent sounds of a foreign language in the general alphabet of another.
In other words, when someone comes across "피아노" in text, I think it is fine for it to sound different from when reading "piano." As samedi points out, language is fluid, and certain words are already a part of the language, regardless of their origin. Is it wrong to say "컴퓨터"? What about "나트륨" (Natrium i.e., sodium)? And, "파리" (Paris)?
"Watch it with the "simple people" talk, 1994."
Brain, may I respectfully inquire as to why this phrase was objectionable? Do you really disagree that they are simple people? Not looking to argue with you, just curious.
The Japanese Empire used to spread their Katakana script to write down Taiwanese (Min-nan dialect) and it was a huge failure, and I mean huge.
Hangul is at least more approachable than some people would expect.
Well, I don't want to open this up to "Koreans are simple-minded" talk, which is where it can go pretty quickly.
This is getting really ahead of ourselves, but I wonder how long this will be considered "Korean" script. After all, if other people are using it, it's not really "Korean" anymore. I wonder if Koreans would be able to handle that. I mean, we've seen them get upset with the way Korean food has been adopted by "foreigners" in other countries.
What struck me was the incongruity between something associated with Korea, Korean pride, the Korean Wave, and globalization.
I think people are confusing the Korean spoken language with the writing system. This tribe is just wanting to use the Hangul writing system because its easy to learn and would help them in preserving their heritage and modernizing themselves. They will probably get a few loan words from the Korean language, but mostly just transcribing their current language into a writable form.
English and most other representative languages are difficult to "import" as they rely heavily on being grown within a culture. Hangul is more direct in its pronunciation with each character representing a particular sound, and combination's being used to form syllables. This and its gentle learning curve make it ideal for importation. Remember it wasn't "grown" as much as invented by a certain old Korean Monarch explicitly for this purpose.
The tribes native language will remain mostly untouched, but they'll just use Hangul to write things down, and probably throw in a unique "modification" or two while their at it.
infonesian are using their alphabet.
why dont they use their alphabet?
they must also learn the indoneshian language?
poor Indonesian tribe
Alright, for anyone interested in the subject I've posted an entry about this on my own blog -- expanding on some of what I said here earlier, commenting on the "size" of the Korean alphabet and its corresponding graphemes, responding to hoihoi51's comment, and providing image resources from the Bahasa Chia-Chia textbook.
Check it out here
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/01/113_59789.html
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