i18n@... wrote:

>
> Andrew Dunbar wrote:
>
> >
> > I was taught hangul in Mexico and Guatemala by a
> > Korean
> > backpacker. She taught me the alphabet in order.
> > First the consonants and then the vowels. Then she
> > showed me how to arrange them into a square.
>
> I had a similar experience in Boston on the T.
>
> > She made no mention of syllabaries and showed me no
> > syllable charts.
>
> In my case, I do believe that a comparison to kana was made, but that
> may have been because I was reading a Japanese book at the time of the
> introduction, and she may have perceived it as representing an
> intermediate ground in my understanding of Korean writing systems.
>
> I kinda remember that way, but I could be wrong.
>
> > I learned it in 1 or 2 days but never learned much
> > vocabulary or spelling.
>
> Same here - I haven't kept up, but I have often thought it would be a
> mighty good bar bet to claim that I could teach someone how to read
> elementary Korean characters in the space of a long day.

But not to pronounce Korean.

Look at Sohn's book.

> > It's only in the last year
> > that I've discovered just how tricky Korean spelling
> > is.
>
> How so? Are there exceptions, or do you mean that the usual Romanization
> is full of holes?

"The usual romanization" is a 1-to-1 transliteration. If it's "full of
holes," then so is Korean orthography. If you call English spelling
"full of holes," then so is Korean -- it's MORPHOPHONEMIC.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...