Korean (was: Re: [Suppress-Script] Initial list of 300 languages)

[Doug Ewell]

Mark Davis <mark dot davis at icu dash project dot org> wrote:

> Korean pages show about 230 times as many characters in Hangul as in
> Han. The sample here is much larger and thus more reliable.

I spoke with a Korean-speaking colleague about the Hangul issue.  She 
said it is "definitely" true that the overwhelming majority of Korean 
text is written in Hangul rather than hanja.

Newspaper headlines and advertisements sometimes appear in hanja, for 
reasons of tradition, but are usually glossed in Hangul.  Some personal 
names (but not all) can be written in hanja, but Hangul is strongly 
encouraged for writing all names.  Hanja is not taught until high 
school.

I plan to pick up a Korean newspaper in the next few days and look 
firsthand into the situation with headlines and ads.  There's a sizable 
Korean population here in Fullerton, so it shouldn't be too hard to find 
one.  So far, though, the evidence seems to weigh strongly in favor of a 
Suppress-Script value of "Hang" for Korean.

--
Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California, USA
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/