Hangeul: Korea's Unique Alphabet (Korea Essentials) Paperback – September 30, 2011

This fun little book is informative, well-written, and eye-catchingly illustrated.The first five chapters were particularly interesting to me, covering the alphabet's history and why it has been praised by linguists so long after its development in the 15th century. Chapter five discusses why women took to the alphabet first and the disparaging names sometimes given to Hangeul in the old days: as an alphabet for women or children, vulgar, or "outhouse" writing. A small piece on how the Indonesian Cia-Cia people have adopted the script is touching and thought-provoking as well.The book really does a great job at capturing the variety and beauty of Hangeul fonts and uses, and although praise of the alphabet seems to almost comically know no bounds for the authors, the graphics on Hangeul's use in the arts, in technology, and the pages of various typefaces really are outstanding, showing the beauty of this most rational of scripts. There's a handy section at the end of the book on places to study Korean, online and offline, and I must say it's very tempting...

I already knew that Hangul, or Hangeul, was and is a highly regarded original new alphabet created for Koreans by their own leadership in the 16th century. This book provided more detailed information on Hanguil and added a lot to my knowledge. It is unfortunately rather repetitive and written by persons who don't know much about scientific linguistics, so they use some words (like "phonemic") in confusing ways -- but this is the best I've found so far. The bibliography may lead further on and well.GS