ANSWER: Of course, some Koreans can still read Hanja, but it seems to be mainly the older Koreans. In the video below, many of the younger Koreans seemed to have a hard time recognizing even simple Chinese characters. Many of them, for example, couldn't even read the characters 未安 (미안), which means "sorry."
What happened to the 1,800-character standard for Korean high school graduates? Is that no longer a standard or a goal in Korea? Is learning Chinese characters in Korea now as unpopular as learning Latin is in the United States?
Friday, May 17, 2024
Why did Korea create the character 㔔, a character not used anywhere else but in Korea?
ANSWER: Because Koreans apparently needed a character to represent the Korean sound /덩/.
But why would 㔔 represent the sound /덩/ instead of the sound /강/, given that its component character 加 is pronounced /가/, not /더/?
ANSWER: Because they used the pronunciation of the pure-Korean "meaning" of 加 (가), not the pronunciation of 加, and the pure-Korean meaning of 加 in 더, which means "more." And then they just needed to add the /ng/ sound of the Hangeul letter "ㅇ" to the character 加 to represent the Korean sound /덩/.
But instead of 加 (가), why didn't they just use a Chinese character that is pronounced /더/ as the component character?
ANSWER: Because there is no Chinese character that is pronounced /더/.
But why would 㔔 represent the sound /덩/ instead of the sound /강/, given that its component character 加 is pronounced /가/, not /더/?
ANSWER: Because they used the pronunciation of the pure-Korean "meaning" of 加 (가), not the pronunciation of 加, and the pure-Korean meaning of 加 in 더, which means "more." And then they just needed to add the /ng/ sound of the Hangeul letter "ㅇ" to the character 加 to represent the Korean sound /덩/.
But instead of 加 (가), why didn't they just use a Chinese character that is pronounced /더/ as the component character?
ANSWER: Because there is no Chinese character that is pronounced /더/.