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From: deb5@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Chinese literacy
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References: <Dnvzz9.3tq@midway.uchicago.edu> <19960307112045EURMXK@sdcmvs.mvs.sas.com>
Date: Sat, 9 Mar 1996 05:07:24 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:51308 sci.lang.japan:32974

In article <19960307112045EURMXK@sdcmvs.mvs.sas.com>,
 <EURMXK@sdcmvs.mvs.sas.com> wrote:
>In article <Dnvzz9.3tq@midway.uchicago.edu>,
>deb5@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff) writes:
> 
><.snip>
> 
>>        However, the Koreans did not follow the same path as the
>>Japanese and develop a commonly-used syllabary.  Instead, in the latter
>>half of the 16th century, a team of scholars under King Sejong created
>You probably mean the first half of the 15th century since Han'gul
>was invented around 1446.
> 
>Regards, 
>Manfred Kiefer

	You're right, and so is Mr. Mathias, who pointed out that,
strictly speaking, hyangch'al, not idu, was used to write the Hyangga,
despite what Martin's dictionary says.  It is in hyangch'al that 
characters are used strictly for their phonetic values whilst in idu
they are used sometimes with semantic and sometimes with phonetic
values.  The latter characters were later abbreviated into a kana-like
system called kugyeol which, like idu, was used primarily to annotate
Chinese texts.

Striving to be more careful,
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
