Chinese Orthographic Reform
HISTORICAL CONCEPTS
Cultural Development
Human Endeavor
ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS
PROGRESSIVE IDEAS
Attempts to create a Chinese alphabet have in the past been difficult. Its sounds are unique, and the existing alphabets are at best imperfect representations of sound combinations. The old Wade-Giles system lacks uniformity and makes poor use of the Roman alphabet. The Pinyin system is better, but the Roman letters still do Chinese a disservice. The BoPoMoFo system, while a native alphabet, is justifiably unpopular: it steals sounds from the characters and contorts them into an irregular system.
There is, however, another east Asian alphabet already in common use among millions of people. Its current language shares a strong bond with Chinese: 60 percent of its vocabulary comes from the most ancient spoken language. In fact academic writing in this country uses Chinese characters heavily. This writing is of course Hangeul, created in the 15th century by order of King Sejeong the Great of the Kingdom of Joseon: Korea. Indeed, part of King Sejong's intent was to represent the sounds of Chinese acurately for Korean speakers, which it does well.
Although stemming from separate linguistic families, many of the sounds in Chinese relate to each other much as they do in Korean. Hangeul then, while created to express the sounds of the Korean language, is a good fit for Chinese as well. In adapting Hangeul to Chinese (Mandarin, based on the sounds of BoPoMoFo), all that was necessary was to revive two defunct letters and adapt six existing letters. The other letters mapped quite easilly to the sounds of Chinese. Think of it as Korea repaying its linguistic debt. Combining the written heritage of two great peoples of Han, it is called Hanyin:
King Sejeong the Great
세정대왕
