"Xun Min Andrew" is one of the few characters in the world whose creation time is exactly known, so it was designated as the No.70 national treasure by South Korea and listed as a world cultural heritage by UNESCO in June 1997.
Xunmin Andrew is a kind of phonography, which consists of 17 consonants and 1 1 vowels. 17 consonants are produced according to the shape of the mouth and tongue, and are divided into dental sounds, tongue sounds, lip sounds, dental sounds and so on. According to different pronunciations, it is basically consistent with the classification of modern phonetics. According to the clarity of the sound, consonants are divided into pure, sub-pure, pure, unclear and unvoiced; There are three basic vowels in the vowels of 1 1, which are made according to the generation order of the universe "heaven, earth and man" that the ancients thought, and other vowels are made according to these three basic vowels. After 560 years of development, three consonants and/kloc-0 vowels have been eliminated, while North Korea and South Korea only use 24 consonants and vowels. With 24 consonants and vowels, 70,000 Korean words can be formed, and these words can form more than 700 million words, so many words are inexhaustible.
"Chinese Characters" in Korean Character Reform
Traditional Korean vocabulary includes inherent words and loanwords. Inherent words refer to the original words in Korean; Loanwords refer to words from other languages, of which nearly 70% are Chinese words from China, which can be written in Chinese in Korean.
19 10 After Japanese imperialism colonized the Korean peninsula, it was forbidden to use Korean, which was even worse in the1940s. Koreans born during this period were not allowed to use Korean and their surnames had to be changed to Japanese surnames.
1945 August 15 after the recovery of the Korean peninsula, it was divided into the north and south of the peninsula, which is today's Korea and South Korea. In order to standardize the use of Chinese characters, both sides reformed the use of Chinese characters after the establishment of political power.
One of the key points of the reform is how to treat Chinese characters. As mentioned earlier, the Korean peninsula has a long history of using Chinese characters, so even after the invention of "training people to correct pronunciation", Chinese characters are still in use. Chinese characters (similar to Japanese today) are included in the writing of court documents and the records of historical classics in the Korean dynasty. In this regard, North Korea has taken a reform measure to completely abolish Chinese characters, that is, all written characters are written in Korean letters, and Chinese characters are no longer mixed. In terms of vocabulary, North Korea also strictly restricts the use of Chinese words and tries to create new words with Korean words as much as possible.
South Korea is not so thorough.
Although South Korea promulgated the "Korean Special Law" in 1948, the use of Chinese characters has not completely stopped. Whether it is Chinese education in schools or folk writing, the phenomenon of Chinese characters mixed has existed for a long time. The policy of using Chinese characters in Korean textbooks is also changing. For example, the presidential decree of 1968 requires the deletion of Chinese characters from primary and secondary school textbooks, but in 1972, Chinese characters are designated as compulsory courses in junior high schools and included in the regular curriculum. 1973 middle school textbooks stipulate the reuse of Chinese characters, and 1995 is changed into an elective course. 1February 1999, then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung signed a presidential decree approving the use of Chinese characters in government documents and road signs. The promulgation of this presidential decree broke the ban on the use of Chinese characters by the Korean government for more than 50 years. At present, the Korean Ministry of Education has issued 1800 "new common Chinese characters" for education and 1300 "common Chinese characters" for daily life.
In fact, whether to abolish or use Chinese characters should be based on whether it is conducive to the cultural development of the nation. The disadvantage of abolishing Chinese characters is that Koreans can't learn the original works of ancient history books, because most of the history books in North Korea are written in Chinese characters. In addition, there are some inconveniences in real life, because there are many homonyms in Korean vocabulary. It is sometimes difficult to understand the meaning of these words correctly and it is easy to misunderstand. Before the abolition of Chinese characters, these words could be represented by Chinese characters. Of course, the abolition of Chinese characters is also beneficial, that is, it is conducive to the popularization of Korean characters and the spread of culture.
Splitting makes words different.
Some friends may ask, do North Korea and South Korea also have dialects? Is there any difference between the two languages? Yes, just like the languages of many countries, there are always local differences. At present, North Korea uses Pyongyang dialect as the standard pronunciation, which is called cultural dialect, while South Korea uses Gyeonggi-do dialect in Seoul as the standard dialect. There are differences in intonation between the two sides. In speaking habits, Koreans use more foreign words, especially English words.
Generally speaking, Korean and Korean are the same in grammar, and the differences are mainly manifested in the writing format of vocabulary and individual sentence patterns, as well as the spelling of some foreign words. In many words, North Korea and South Korea have different spellings, and some are so different that they can't understand each other's words correctly.
In today's "computer age" with highly developed information, many ethnic characters are difficult to process on the computer, while Korean characters are the opposite. Because Korean Chinese characters write a consonant first and then a vowel (or write a vowel first and then a vowel), the same number of consonants and vowels are evenly arranged in the left and right hand operation parts of the computer keyboard, so that the left and right hands use the same number of times when typing, and there will be no discomfort. It is believed that Korean characters with a history of 560 years will also get greater development in the information age.