[Also called] Hangeul Proclamation Day Korean Alphabet Day
[Significance] Commemorates the invention of hangeul
[Date] October 9 (South Korea)
The Korean Alphabet Day, known as Hangeul Day in South Korea, (and Choson'gul Day in North Korea) is
a national Korean commemorative day marking the invention and the proclamation of Hangul, the alphabet of the Korean language,
by the 15th-century Korean monarch Sejong the Great.
It is observed on October 9 in South Korea and (on January 15 in North Korea).
[Etymology] In South Korea, the holiday is known as Hangeul Proclamation Day, or Hangeul Day for short, and is celebrated on October 9.
[History] According to the Sejong Sillok (¼¼Á¾½Ç·Ï;á¦ðóãùÖà), King Sejong proclaimed publication of Hunmin Jeongeum (ÈƹÎÁ¤À½;ýºÚÅïáëå),
the document introducing the newly created alphabet which was also originally called by the same name, in the ninth month of the lunar calendar in 1446.
In 1926, the Hangeul Society celebrated the octo-sexagesimal (480th) anniversary of the declaration of hangeul on the last day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, which is on November 4 of the Gregorian calendar.
Members of the Society declared it the first observance of "Gagyanal" (°¡°¼³¯).
The name came from "Gagyageul" (°¡°¼±Û), an early colloquial name for hangeul, based on a mnemonic recitation beginning "gagya geogyeo" (°¡°¼°Å°Ü).
The name of the commemorative day was changed to "Hangullal" in 1928, soon after the term "hangul", coined originally in 1913 by Ju Si-gyeong,
became widely accepted as the new name for the alphabet.
The day was then celebrated according to the lunar calendar.
In 1931, the celebration of the day was switched to October 29 of the Gregorian calendar.
In 1934 arose the claim that they must assume that the Julian calendar was used in 1446, so the date was again changed to October 28.
The discovery in 1940 of an original copy of the Hunmin Jeongeum Haerye,
a volume of commentary to the Hunmin Jeongeum that appeared not long after the document it commented upon,
revealed that the Hunmin Jeongeum was announced during the first ten days (sangsun; »ó¼ø; ß¾ââ) of the ninth month.
The tenth day of the ninth month of 1446 of the lunar calendar in 1446 was equivalent to October 9 of the Julian calendar.
After the South Korean government was established in 1945, Hangeul Day was declared as a legal holiday to be marked on October 9, on which governmental workers are excused from work.
Its legal status as a holiday was removed in 1991 because of pressure from major employers to increase the number of working days,
along with the introduction of the Korean United Nations Day.
However, Hangeul Day still retains a legal status as a national commemoration day.
The Hangeul Society has campaigned to restore the holiday's former status,
but with little impact until November 1, 2012 when supporters won their biggest victory yet as the National Assembly voted 189 to 4 (4 abstained)
in favor of a resolution calling for the restoration of Hangeul Day.
This put pressure on the Lee Myung Bak administration to make Hangeul Day a public holiday.
This change has been applied, making Hangeul Day a national holiday starting in 2013.
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Hangul (or hangeul), the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language.
It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean.
It was created in the mid-15th century, and is now the official script of both North Korea and South Korea and is co-official
in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Jilin Province, People's Republic of China.
Hangul is a true alphabet of 24 consonant and vowel letters. However,
instead of being written sequentially like the letters of the Latin alphabet,
Hangul letters are grouped into blocks, such as ÇÑ han; each of these blocks transcribes a syllable.
That is, although ÇÑ may look like a single character, it is composed of three distinct letters:
¤¾ h, ¤¿ a, and ¤¤ n.
Each Hangul block consists of two to five letters, including at least one consonant and one vowel.
These blocks are then arranged either horizontally from left to right or vertically from top to bottom.
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In Search of a Universal Phonetic Alphabet -Theory and Application of an Organic Visible Speech-
Phonetic symbols have an indispensable role to play in phonetics, linguistics,language teaching,
speech pathology and speech sciences in general.
And linguists and phoneticians in the east and west have made attempts to devise appropriate phoneticalphabets at one time or another in human history.
The most successful and popular phonetic alphabet today is no doubt the International Phonetic Alphabet,
which beingbased mainly on Latin and Greek letters, consists of unsystematic mass of arbitrary symbols.
Hunmin Jeongeum, the original version of the Korean alphabet is a highly sophisticated system
consisting of sets of interrelated organic phonetic symbols, each set representing either the shape of the organs of speech or their articulatory movements.
The Korean alphabet is, in a true sense of the word,
a set of phonetic symbols designed to represent the visible speech sounds of human beings.
In an attempt to devise an ideal and universal organic phonetic alphabet the author
has applied extensively the organic principle that was exploited by King Sejong of Korea in 1446
in creating Hunmin Jeongeum.
The International Korean Phonetic Alphabet (IKPA for short) is a system of phonetic symbols
that is just as systematic, scientific, easy to learn and memorize as the Korean alphabet.
The IKPA symbols visualize or mirror the actual speech organs or their action and
thus tell us exactly what sort of an articulatory action is involved in producing speech sounds.
It is in this sense that the IKPA is called "A Universal Visible Speech".
by Hyun Bok Lee, CBE. Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Phonetics and Linguistics Seoul National University
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For example, each Chinese character has a meaning, so people have to memorize all of them,
but the Korean alphabet is made of phonetic letters just like English.
Anyone can learn Hangul in a day, that is why it is called 'morning letter'.
It is easy to learn because it can be put together with 10 vowels and 14 consonants.
Hangul has 8,000 different kinds of sound and it is possible to write each sound.
Because Japanese letters imitate Chinese characters, they cannot be used without Chinese characters.
Chinese is too difficult to learn, therefore the illiteracy rate is very high.
Latin was used as an official language of the Roman Catholic church.
It has been used as a custom or religious authority for people who in Western societies, Latin is disappearing.
Hangul was invented 500 years ago.
but it has only been used for 100 years by all Koreans.
Now it is standing in the world proudly with its value.
Korean has been chosen as a foreign language in some universities in the United States and Australia. ...
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