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Learn to Speak Korean! Part 8-8

690 views · Published 1 March 2010 · 5:58 · Indexed 19 October 2026

Channel: smartboyee2 · 2010 · People & Blogs

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Formerly the languages of the Korean peninsula were written using Chinese characters, using hyangchal or idu. Such systems relied on principles of rebus, and were lost, later in history. Writing became confined to the ruling elite, who used hanja to write in Classical Chinese.

Korean is now mainly written in Hangul, the Korean alphabet promulgated in 1446 by Sejong the Great; hanja may be mixed in to write Sino-Korean words. While South Korean schools still teach 1,800 hanja characters, North Korea had abolished the use of hanja decades ago.

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