* Jungshik Shin | | Yes, it's my principal point that Hangul is an alphabetic script | because Jamo is an alphabet.
I can sympathize with that point of view, and certainly agree that Jamo could have been used as an alphabet like all the others. That is not how it is used, however. If you look at the other alphabets they all follow a very similar model where the basic symbols follow one another linearly, each denoting a single letter. Hangul does not fit this model at all. Because of this I think it is misleading to call Hangul an alphabet, even though the basic symbols, the Jamo, may be alphabetic. | To me, that Daniels and King came up with two different | 'designations' for Hangul just strengthens the case that Hangul | cannot be put into any single type, but it is both. And other | scripts may have similar characteristics so that I think it'd better | to life the restriction of 'pigeon-holing'. There is actually no such restriction, but I have yet to find a script that I feel rightly belongs as an instance of two different types. | How about making a table with one axis running along scripts and the | other axis along various characteristics? It might well be worthwhile to add to the site information about the different properties of each writing system. I do some of that now (writing direction, and in a few cases also number of characters), and would like to extend this in the future. It is not so easy to come up with a useful set of characteristics, though. | Why is Hangul featural? As Ken wrote, Hangul is featural at | the higher level (syllable level). However, I had something different | in mind when I wrote that Hangul is featural. (actually, Ken alluded | to a part of what I'm writing when talking about single consonant vs | double consonant.) It's also featural at a lower level. Agreed, and this is another thing that separates it from the alphabets, none of which are featural. | BTW, it just occurred to me that Latin alphabets can be regarded as | featural in that various vowels with related/similar pronunciations | are distinguished by adding diacritics to base vowels. That is what I had in mind when I asked if Kenneth thought the use of diacritics in French was featural. I think it's fair to say that some latin writing systems have featural properties, but basis of the writing system is not featural, so I don't think it is fair to call latin a featural script. --Lars M.
