Stephen Epstein wrote: >In article <32A453F2.15FB@cs.colostate.edu>, "Y. Malaiya" > wrote: > >> As you probably know, both Korean and Katakana (Japanese) >> scripts were invented by Buddhist monks to represent >> Indian sounds better, hence both of them have some >> relationship with Hindi (Devanagari) script. > >Sorry, but for Korean this is absolutely not the case (can't say for sure >about katakana, but I find it unlikely). Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was >devised in 1443 by a group of scholars who were appointed by King Sejong >to come up with an alphabetic system for recording the Korean language. >Previously Koreans had used a very complex system known as "idu" which >employed Chinese characters, and proved to be much too cumbersone. This account, frequently retold, is only partially accurate. The Korean alphabet was really invented by a Buddhist monk Syol Chong, possibly around 1446. At that time, Buddhist literature was widely read and Siddham and Tibetan scripts were widely known to the Buddhist monks. Korean script is very phonetic, just like Indian scripts. The shapes of the letters were however independently invented, although some may seem to resemble Devanagari. The Korean alphabet was revised in 1777-81. Why has the king been later attributed with inventing Hangul? First, the invention occured when the state in Korea had been opposed to Buddhism (and favoring Confucianism). Secondly the credit for having Chinese script largely replaced by Hangul goes to the Christian missionaries who found Hangul to be more suitable. Korea today has a very large Christian population. Yashwant