earticle

영어

This article aims to demonstrate that Hangul was created using scientific principles based on Ancient Indian phonetic theories. There is no denying that King Sejong referred to Classical Chinese phonology and the Mongolian Phags-pa script at an early stage of the invention process. At a later stage, however, Hangul began to be more refined with reference to Ancient Indian phonetics; Shinmi, the Buddhist monk, aided this process. Incorporating those theories eventually led to the invention of a writing system that finely reflects the Korean sounds' place and manner of articulation. It is stressed that the creation of Hangul was not achieved out of thin air solely from Sejong's ingenuity. Rather, as argued by Chung (2015), Hangul is the fruitful outcome of a series of laborious tasks of examining and analyzing other scripts used in Asian languages, coupled with meticulous analyses of extant linguistic theories developed in China and India. This article provides several pieces of evidence to support the aforementioned claims by highlighting the role of the phonetic theories adopted from Ancient India for the invention of Hangul, thereby strengthening Chung's (2015) arguments.