Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
these traits are unique, hangul character designs weren't created in a total vacuum, as
some Korean nationalists claim; scholars have remarked on the similarities between
hangul and the Mongol alphabet of the time, which would have made an appearance
in the royal libraries.
Hangul's design elements, along with the way vowels and consonants can be
combined to approximate almost any sound, are impressive, but nothing speaks more
to the virtues of hangul than its effectiveness. Today, nearly 100 percent of South
Koreans are literate, one of the highest rates in the world.
THE LANGUAGE LADDER
Being a heavily hierarchal society, South Korea has a language to match. One of
the biggest stumbling blocks for new students of Korean is the way sentence struc-
ture and even vocabulary have to change depending on to whom you're speaking.
Technically Korean has half a dozen levels of politeness, but these categories can
be broadly divided into
jeondaemal
(formal) and
banmal,
or casual speech. The dif-
ferences are most apparent in verb endings—the very casual
kaja
versus the polite
kapshida
for “let's go,” for example. They also pop up in words and expressions,
such as the formal
chapsushida
versus the typical
mogda
for “eat.”
Choosing the right form of speech to use with someone is important. Generally
people who are older or in clear positions of authority (teachers, police, or bosses, for
example) will expect to be addressed in the politer forms of Korean and may be quite
offended if they're not. Children and your close friends, on the other hand, would
find it strange or very humorous indeed if you spoke to them using
jeondaemal.
That said, there's no need for undue stress about language forms. Most South
Koreans understand that their language is a complex one and are very impressed with
any effort by a nonnative to speak it, mistakes or no. And when in doubt, there's a
sort of catchall that can be appended to any sentence to make it an acceptably polite
one—the suffix
-yo,
which you'll hear often in everyday speech. Thus
ka
(go) be-
comes
kayo, mogo
(eat) becomes
mogoyo,
and so on.
The indigenous script, hangul, was unveiled by King Sejong in the mid-15th century to
combat the problem of illiteracy, and it is still viewed as a masterful linguistic achievement,
