this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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The intro of the video is a bit silly, but the info on Hangul's historical background is really cool. Specially regarding the "lost letters"; further info here, for those who want.
Relevant to note a writing system doesn't need to be flexible to "spread out". The Latin alphabet for example wasn't designed like Hangul*, but it was still pretty much tailored to a single language, Latin. That's why for example you have so few letters for fricatives and vowels. It's more of a matter of power - the Latin alphabet piggybacked on Republican Rome, then the Imperial Rome, then the Catholic church.
In an alternate timeline, where English used Hangul instead... people wouldn't be screaming "why does ⟨island⟩ have a mute ⟨s⟩???". They'd be screaming why
has a mute ⟨ㅅ⟩ instead, or similar**.
The youtuber probably knows it because it pops up specially often when talking about Korean, but do note what's transcribed as /ʌ/ for English is actually closer to [ɐ]. So when she talks about ⟨ㆍ⟩, note the letter was probably for something like [ɐ] or [ə]; a different sound than ⟨ㅓ⟩ eo that is also transcribed as /ʌ/ (this one is actually [ʌ] though).
*with a major exception: the letter ⟨G⟩. Originally Latin spelled both /k/ and /g/ with ⟨C⟩. Then some guy called Ruga was not amused people kept mispronouncing his name. The Roman emperor Claudius also designed three letters, ⟨Ↄ Ⅎ Ⱶ⟩, but they were short lived.
** inb4: yes, I know, ⟨ㅣㅏ⟩ are supposed to represent /i a/, not /aɪ̯ ə/... in Korean; my point is that English would make the same mess with Hangul it does with Latin. Also, I had to cheese the cluster there.