Some Hangul characters are equivalent to only one English vowel, but most are equivalent to one consonant and one vowel (like Japanese kana). In addition there many are equivalent to 2 consonants and 1 vowel so Hangul are more efficient than kana. Perhaps 2.2 English letters per Hangul character at a guess? Also remember that Kanji are used together with Hangul, which tends to increase that number.
Bruce ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Duerst" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Adam M. Costello" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "IETF idn working group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 12:01 PM Subject: Re: [idn] Re: hi > Hello Adam, > > At 18:31 01/10/20 -0700, Adam M. Costello wrote: > > >The situation is much worse for Korean. I think each Hangul character > >carries the information of only about 1.5 English letters, > > It may be lower than Chinese, but I'm very surprised it should > be that low. Any pointers to sources? Are they for running text, > or for names? For running text, Korean uses spaces, but Chinese > doesn't, so that already could explain quite a bit of the > difference. > > > >but still > >takes about 2.9 octets in AMC-ACE-Z, which means a maximal Korean domain > >label (20 hangul) holds about as much information as a 30-letter English > >string. Of all the languages I've looked at, Korean is by far the least > >dense when encoded using AMC-ACE-Z. > > Even if this were true, a 30-letter limit in English would still be > nothing really bad in actual practice. > > Regards, Martin. > >
