Marco Cimarosti wrote:

> > BTW I see neither rotations nor reflections in hangul! The letters are
> > clearly top-left-oriented, and anyway are brush-written so symmetry
> > always gives way to gracefulness.
>
> Perhaps Adam was talking about Hangul vowels? There are 8 vowel letters
> whose symmetry suggest rotating the same basic shapes.
>
> Two letters are vertical strokes with 1 or 2 dots on one side; the other 6
> letter look like the same 2 shapes rotated 3 times by 90 degrees, obtaining
> 6 more letters.

But they're used even less independently than p q b d; and I gather that
Korean children are taught to read not the letters, but complete
syllable blocks.

> Notice that I wrote "look like": I don't imply that the inventor(s) of
> Hangul actually rotated letters and attributed a meaning to this. Perhaps
> they simply used all the possibilities of a few basic strokes, so that the
> resulting letters where not too much complicated.

The letters were originally designed for cutting in woodblocks and were
simple straight lines and dots; adaptation to the brush came a bit
later. And the consonants were meant to be iconic for parts of the vocal
tract.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...