Wuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut!

http://www.france24.com/en/20090806-ind ... et-scholar

So an Indonesian tribe has officially decided to use hangul as its new writing system?

Even Wikipedia's hangul page says it is used to write Korean and Cia-Cia.

So, what are your thoughts on this? How long do you think it is going to last? Imagine if it did last and there were tons of languages written with hangul.

As for me. Hmm, hangul is a pretty good writing system, and it would be cool if there was lots of other countries that wrote with hangul, but I'm not sure if they can pull this off right. Hangul's advantage is that it is written in blocks so you can write each Chinese Character in one block. Cia-Cia doesn't use Chinese loanwords (though if this lasts, they should be starting anytime soon), so this is a moot point, and you are left using a writing system that is best for writing morphophonemically being only used phonetically.

Another thing I noticed is that the wrote the L sound by having a ㄹ at the bottom of the last letter and an ㄹ again at the start of the character they want an L. So for example sigola was written as 시골라. Kinda cumbersome for me. If a language has a lot of Ls and they aren't made the same way as Korean, (like a contraction? not sure how to explain it, I think there was a word to describe the way languages sounds are pronounced in this manner, but I forgot it), I think they should find a simpler way to write L in hangul for them. Something like a double ㄹ would be nice. (But I guess maybe a pain for computers.)

I don't know Cia-Cia, but I have a pretty good feeling their Ls aren't contracted versions of other consonants like Korean because every time I see a final ㄹ it is before another ㄹ in the next character, leading me to believe the mechanism is there only to make the L sound.

Why not just use Latin? It's easy to learn to read & write, plus it's already used for virtually every language of Nusantara, including Indonesian.

Because if they use Hangul the HunMinJeongEum Society will provide them with free textbooks, education, Korean stuff et al. And they'd attract international attention and get a page in Wikipedia & a topic in Omniglot for their intriguing choice.

I'm not sure why Korea wants to promote the use of Hangeul abroad. It's a unique writing system, yes, but how well-suited is it for adaptation to other languages?

Well, let's take a look at Chinese, another unique writing system that isn't well suited for adaption to other languages.

And Korea, Japan, and Vietnam have all used or adapted the Chinese writing system for their own languages (at one point in time at least).

Korea wants to do the same I guess. But also because it'd make Korea more famous I guess.

But the Korean, Japanese & Vietnamese languages also borrowed massive amounts of Chinese vocabulary, not just the characters. So it makes more sense for them to use the characters.

Like there has to be a logical reason for everything. Damn rationalist.

I find it interesting they adopted Hangeul. If they like it then that's all that matters.

I was under the impression that they borrowed massive amounts of Chinese vocabulary /because/ they borrowed Chinese characters. Before Chinese characters, those languages didn't use Chinese vocabulary.

Or so I thought. Am I wrong?

(That's why I said in the first post that if they don't use any Chinese loanwords, they should be starting anytime soon. :P)

Flame bait.


This is true. But since they borrowed the vocabulary it makes more sense for them to have kept using the characters as long as they did, and, of course, Japanese still uses them in everyday use.


Remeber, this is in Indonesia. These Cia-Cia people learn Indonesian in the schools and learn to speak it at a native level. I'm sure their language is more likely to borrow from Indonesian than from Korean or Sino-Korean.
That's why I think it makes more sense for them to use Latin. Since they already know Latin from learning Indonesian.

I heard about this sometime ago and I must say that I was pleasantly shocked because 한굴 is my favorite writing system. I would like to see what letters they chose though and examples.

So if they make this 100% official this will be the second language in the world to use 한굴.



I think I would die from happiness. You realize that if this happened they would have to include English in this too. No sense in leaving us out in using one of the coolest writing systems ever invented.

I envy Korea and Indonesia now. XD