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Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part IV

"How Korea's alphabet is saving an Indonesian dialect", SCMP (1/4/24)

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Cha-cha Cia-cia: the last dance

In previous posts, I chronicled the bizarre story of how the Hangeul alphabet was chosen to be the "official" script for a language called Cia-Cia spoken by an obscure tribe in Indonesia: "The Hangeul Alphabet Moves beyond the Korean Peninsula" "Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part II" "Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part III" Because the whole proposition was […]

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Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part III

Back in August and December of last year, I wrote about the efforts of Hangeul enthusiasts to get a tribe in Indonesia to adopt Hangeul as their script. The latest news, in the Korea Times, no less, is that the rumors of the tribe's having chosen Hangeul as their offical script were not only premature, […]

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Hangeul for Cia-Cia, part II

Back in August, I posted a report about how the Hangeul alphabet had moved beyond the Korean Peninsula.  Now, nearly half a year later, it may be worth taking a look at how things are progressing in this novel attempt to introduce the Hangeul alphabet to members of a 60,000 member Indonesian tribe called the […]

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Happy Hangul Day!

Language wars, the Korean edition "Foreign words dominate signboards, restaurant menus in Korea", omonatheydidn't, LiveJournal (10/8/23; page loaded 10/9/23); source: The Korea Times Trendy use of foreign languages apparently sparks outrage in Korea as well. A Seoul-based office worker surnamed Kim, 35, was perplexed at being unable to locate the Japanese restaurant he had reserved […]

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Mutilating Hangeul: visual puns as a parallel orthography

Bizarre scriptplay in Korea: [Newsmaker] "What is ‘daengdaengi?’ Government’s use of Hangeul slang stirs controversy"By Lim Jae-seong, The Korea Herald (Oct 7, 2022) The article is rather long.  Here I quote only the first portion, but will summarize some of the more important points at the bottom. The National Institute of Korean Language’s use of […]

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Promoting Chinese characters in Korea

Most of what is said below applies mainly to South Korea, since Hangul-only writing has been even more deeply entrenched in North Korea than in the south.

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Bahasa and the concept of "National Language"

I've long been aware that many of the languages of Southeast Asia are referred to as bahasa. Here's a list from Wikipedia: The Indonesian language, or Bahasa Indonesia The Malay language, or Bahasa Melayu The Javanese language, or Basa Jawa, also Basa Jawi The Sundanese language, or Basa Sunda The Balinese language, or Basa Bali […]

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