Based on my research, about 70 million people around the globe speak Korean! The korean language is pretty similar to Japanese in terms of the structure, grammar and vocabulary. Like other countries, Korea has many dialects as well. The most standard form of Korean spoken can be found in Seoul. Dialects spoken in Korean are understandable except for one which is the old Cheju dialect.
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| Han'gul Alphabets |
The Koreans hold their language in high regards just like the French. Not only that, they also value their alphabet, han'gul which was invented in the mid-fifteenth century. Before the han'gul was invented, the Koreans did not have characters of their own. The Korea's aristocratic society used Chinese characters while the Korean government used this writing system called idu which is a transcript system of Korean words invented by Silla scholars using Chinese characters. This Chinese system was deem tedious at that time and it was difficult to translate spoken Korean into Chinese characters. Therefore, this leads to high illiteracy in Korea.
King Sejong (1397- 1450) the fourth ruler of the Choson Dynasty was troubled with the high illiteracy problem and demanded his scholars to create their very own phonetic writing system that resemble the spoken Korean. This was when han'gul was created and the Koreans were so proud of it that they celebrate Han'gul Day on 9 October at King Sejong's tomb.
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