语言与文风2013mentalfloss.com
纪念韩文书写系统的节日
A Holiday in Honor of the Korean Writing System
导读
这篇文章介绍韩文（Hangul）及其纪念日，讲述这套字母系统如何在15世纪被设计出来、为何被公认为世界上最科学、最易学的书写系统之一。对写作者来说，它提供了一个关于“简洁而精巧的设计如何胜过复杂堆砌”的绝佳案例，也牵出文字改革与政治、文化断裂之间的关系。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
好的文字（和好的书写系统）是精心设计出来的：Hangul 按发音器官的形状造字，说明结构化的简洁比繁复堆砌更有生命力。
- 02
借用外来文化要改造而非照搬：日韩都从汉字出发，韩国用 Hangul 干净利落地解决了汉字与本国语言不匹配的问题，日本却走向了极其复杂的混合系统。
- 03
简洁与复杂可以并存：表面简单的 Hangul 能转写各种语言，好的写作也是表层平易、内里精巧。
- 04
文字改革常被新政权用来与旧时代切割（如简体字、土耳其拼写改革），书写形式从来不只是技术问题。
HN 评论精选
文字改革常是政治断裂的产物，而解决语言不匹配需要的是干净的设计而非复杂堆砌。
正字法改革通常与某种革命相关，近例有简体字推行、俄语正字法改变和土耳其拼写改革，新政权往往把文字改革当作与旧政权切割的方式；而没有专制政府强硬支持的改革通常失败，比如德国1996年的尝试。比较日韩书写系统很有意思：两者都因中华帝国的文化威望而借用汉字，但韩语、日语与汉语差异很大，韩国人在15世纪用 Hangul 干净利落地解决了问题，日本却造出了一套极其复杂的书写系统。
Jun8查看英文原文
Orthographic reforms are usually associated with a revolution of some kind, some recent examples are the introduction of Simplified Chinese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters), the change in Russian orthography (http://russiasgreatwar.org/media/culture/orthography.shtml, although this started earlier than the Bolshevik Revolution) and the Turkish Spelling Reform. In these cases the new regime sees the change as a way to cut ties with old one. The ones that don't have the hard-core backing of an autocratic government generally don't succeed, e.g. the very recent one that was attempted in Germany in 1996. It is interesting to compare Japanese and Korean writing systems: Both of these started with borrowing Chinese characters, due to the immense cultural prestige of the Chinese Empire. These languages show striking similarities to each other (and Turkic languages of Central Asia; although they are usually considered language isolates this may stem more from a cultural bias). Although the Chinese logographic writing system seems hopeless to an outsider, it is uniquely suited to the to tonal Chinese language. The problem is that Korean and Japanese are very different from Chinese (i.e. Mandarin and its "dialects" spoken in China which are part of the Sino-Tibetan family). Koreans have solved this problem cleanly in the 15th century by inventing Hangul while the Japanese approach was to create an extremely complicated writing system with different characters, including many Chinese ones. Maybe Japanese writing was more culturally ingrained by the Middle ages in Japan compared to Korea to make such a sweeping reform unthinkable or perhaps its feudal structure (i.e. the regional daimyo) and a weak emperor did not have the clout of a ruler like King Sejong in Korea. Maybe someone with knowledge of Southeast Asian history care to comment on this.
Hangul 以模仿发音器官的设计实现简单与复杂的统一，证明好设计可以既易学又强大。
Zed Shaw 的文章说 Hangul 可能是人类目前最先进的字母表，同时又比大多数字母表更简单：它能像汉字一样堆叠，也能像我们的字母那样构造元音；约1443年发明，字符甚至模仿嘴、下颌和声门发音的形状，表面简单却藏着惊人的复杂性。它擅长转写其他语言，一些人类学家想用它记录濒危语言；无论是否会说韩语，普通人约三天就能学会。
lobo_tuerto查看英文原文
I remember first reading about it on a Zed Shaw's article: "Ever seen the Korean alphabet? It’s called Hangul and it is probably the most advanced alphabet humans have right now while also being simpler than most of them at the same time. It can be stacked like Chinese characters, but it’s also built more like ours with an ability to construct unusual vowel sounds. Get this, it was invented in about 1443 AD and even mimicks the way the mouth is constructed. That’s right, the characters actually look like how the mouth, jaw, and glottis form to make the sound. It’s brilliant and a gorgeous piece of work that demonstrates how something simple can also have incredible complexity lurking under the surface. Did you know that Hangul is so good at mimicking other language constructs that some anthropologists want to use it to record near-extinct languages? It takes an average person about 3 days to learn it, whether they speak Korean or not, and they can use it to write down their own language even if it’s completely different from Korean. It’s that universal. Imagine being able to get native speakers of dying languages to actually write down how their language is pronounced. Now that’s power. I’ll give you a great example. I was walking around Seoul one day and drinking this soda call “Pocari Sweat” (said so in English on the side). Yeah, it says it’s got sweat in it but damn it was good. I turn to a Korean woman, point at the Hangul on the side of the can, and ask in bad Korean, “Can you say this?” She reads each character of Hangul as: “poh car ee sw et” That’s right, the English on the can was mimicked nearly exactly by the Hangul and it made no sense to her either. But, she could read it and we both said the same exact verbal noises even though we read different alphabets. She thought it was funny too." http://zedshaw.com/essays/fortune_favors_big_turds.html
好的书写系统往往具备完全表音、逻辑一致的构造，可作为衡量文字设计优劣的参照。
只通行于斯里兰卡的僧伽罗语也有类似特征：完全表音；音节由逻辑一致的元音符号系统附加在辅音字符上构成；使用纯元音、基本无重音；字母表按舌位和鼻化排列成逻辑网格。它最大的缺点是正式语法非常拉丁化、同样难掌握，好在口语版本基本没有语法。
merkitt查看英文原文
Sinhalese, spoken only in Sri Lanka, naturally has some of these features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_alphabet 1. Fully phonetic 2. Syllables are formed by a logical and consistent system of vowel signs that can be attached to consonant characters 3. Uses pure vowels and largely un-accentuated except for some minor stress on the first syllable of words 4. Alphabet order is logical -- a grid arranged by tongue position and nasalization The biggest bad thing about the language: the formal grammar is very much latin-like, and equally difficult to master. Fortunately, the spoken version is largely grammar-less. Source: I speak it.
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