Random Linguistics SPAZZ (TWDR related)
Whilst I enjoyed the monologue in episode 12 that Sejong gives about WHY he’s doing this, why he’s cutting up dead bodies to research articulation, why he’s going to such great lengths and what his alphabet is “missing” as it were (spoiler [paraphrasing]: apparently it’s missing a natural element, that comes from being human, and the fact that the symbols are rooted in how the KOREAN people articulate their sounds is what makes Hangul their language, and natural to them), I do find the over dramatization of it somewhat amusing.
It makes sense, in this story they’re telling, seeped in Confucian morals, to give the Confucian abiding minions a reason that resonates with them, most certainly, and that the phonetics behind the constructions of the symbols of hangul themselves have a rooting (lol) in those teachings.
And, I know for a fact that the vowel symbols are deliberately balanced the way they are (ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ ㅗ ㅏ ㅜ ㅓ ㅛ ㅑ ㅠ ㅕ), representing Heaven, Earth and Man, and to represent the vowel harmony (linguistic thing, look it up) that preexists in hangul.

But I’m a technical person, so I like symbolism, but here’s the thing… if you’re inventing an entirely new writing script, making a featural alphabet, id est one based on the phonology of your language and one that actually gives you visual clues to the pronunciation and articulation of your language, is literally the most logical thing to do. You want to promote literacy, and you want something that fits your language and your language alone, then phonology is the most obvious place to start.
The thing about Hangul was that it was one of, if not the first alphabet of that kind. And it was brilliant! So frakking brilliant! I like the whole symbolism of the people and nature and bringing Joseon philosophy and worldviews into it… but at the end of the day the sheer linguistic technical brilliance of the creation of hangul is what makes me so impressed and respect Sejong so much. The technical brilliance of hangul remains, outside of any dramatization and historic or less than historic retelling.
And that’s what I get excited about. That’s what I care about more than any deep fictional reasoning. The symbols LOOK like the way you SAY THEM. They TEACH YOU HOW TO SAY IT. UGH.

More scripts should be featural. And yet so FEW writing systems ARE. And the ones that are, all of them are invented writing systems, rather than evolved ones.
Hangul is the most common. A bunch of shorthands comes next. Then probably the Canadian Syllabic Scripts written for the Canadian First People’s. Tolkien’s Tengwar another. (like, of COURSE, Tolkien, Philologist, Linguist and Anglo Saxon Professor, of course his invented script is featural).
But not many others are at all.
I really wish the people documenting and creating writing systems for the thousands of languages discovered in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia had the same approach: that of breaking down the language’s phonology and creating a system that suited its phonology and articulation best. They don’t however, rather they tend to bastardize existing scripts, usually Latin. I suppose this is because of time; It takes a long time to create an entirely new script. But how beneficial would it be! And so much more logical, fitting and efficient. To me anyway.
It would also encourage a linguistic understanding of the language you’re speaking, thus a better understanding overall.