<story><title>Why was western printing superior to Asian printing?</title><url>https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/why-was-western-printing-superior</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rvba</author><text>Is there some way to learn hangul to be able to write it?&lt;p&gt;I dont ask about learning actual Korean. Just Hangul yo say &amp;quot;write English in Hangul&amp;quot; - if it is possible.&lt;p&gt;Or some service that &amp;quot;translitetates&amp;quot; your name to Hangul?</text></item><item><author>masklinn</author><text>&amp;gt; In particular for Korea: Hangul [0], which is a &amp;quot;simpler&amp;quot; language&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a language, it&amp;#x27;s an alphabet. And I fail to see the need for quotes, there&amp;#x27;s really no denying hangul is simpler than hanja.&lt;p&gt;However the syllabic structure of hangul would still make it a lot more challenging printing than the linear structure of the latin alphabetic script: you&amp;#x27;d need either a type piece per syllable (of which there are &amp;gt;10000), or you&amp;#x27;d need a variant for each possible block layout.&lt;p&gt;There are 9 possible layouts, though there are limitations which cuts down on the complexity of that option. But still, assuming you want fixed-size &lt;i&gt;blocks&lt;/i&gt; and depending on your decisions on complex finals you&amp;#x27;d need 6-9 variants of each initial, and 2-3 version of each final.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re fine with variable-size blocks (and spacers to line things up) then you can probably cut down to 3 or even 2 of each initials, but it&amp;#x27;s not going to look great.</text></item><item><author>simonebrunozzi</author><text>One thing that doesn&amp;#x27;t get mentioned often is that the West had a &amp;quot;simpler&amp;quot; alphabet of 26 characters, 10 numbers, and a few punctuation marks (~20). Ok, add uppercase, and you&amp;#x27;re still at about 80 individual, distinct characters.&lt;p&gt;Chinese or Korean, on the other hand, needed many more characters. Creating the movable types for them was not an easy feat. Certainly more difficult than with the German equivalent.&lt;p&gt;In particular for Korea: Hangul [0], which is a &amp;quot;simpler&amp;quot; language that gradually took over Hanja [1] in Korea, was &amp;quot;created&amp;quot; only in the 15th century, not before. Earlier than that, even if Korea has the equivalent of &amp;quot;printing&amp;quot;, the complexity of it was higher than the one experienced with the west alphabet.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Origin_of_Hangul&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Origin_of_Hangul&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hanja&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hanja&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>masklinn</author><text>Hangul itself is quite easy: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanestrada.com&amp;#x2F;learntoreadkoreanin15minutes&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanestrada.com&amp;#x2F;learntoreadkoreanin15minutes&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;But the Korean phonology is different from English and generally simpler so you’ll need to approximate a fair bit (not unlike English words in Japanese phonology).</text></comment>
<story><title>Why was western printing superior to Asian printing?</title><url>https://erikexamines.substack.com/p/why-was-western-printing-superior</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rvba</author><text>Is there some way to learn hangul to be able to write it?&lt;p&gt;I dont ask about learning actual Korean. Just Hangul yo say &amp;quot;write English in Hangul&amp;quot; - if it is possible.&lt;p&gt;Or some service that &amp;quot;translitetates&amp;quot; your name to Hangul?</text></item><item><author>masklinn</author><text>&amp;gt; In particular for Korea: Hangul [0], which is a &amp;quot;simpler&amp;quot; language&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not a language, it&amp;#x27;s an alphabet. And I fail to see the need for quotes, there&amp;#x27;s really no denying hangul is simpler than hanja.&lt;p&gt;However the syllabic structure of hangul would still make it a lot more challenging printing than the linear structure of the latin alphabetic script: you&amp;#x27;d need either a type piece per syllable (of which there are &amp;gt;10000), or you&amp;#x27;d need a variant for each possible block layout.&lt;p&gt;There are 9 possible layouts, though there are limitations which cuts down on the complexity of that option. But still, assuming you want fixed-size &lt;i&gt;blocks&lt;/i&gt; and depending on your decisions on complex finals you&amp;#x27;d need 6-9 variants of each initial, and 2-3 version of each final.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re fine with variable-size blocks (and spacers to line things up) then you can probably cut down to 3 or even 2 of each initials, but it&amp;#x27;s not going to look great.</text></item><item><author>simonebrunozzi</author><text>One thing that doesn&amp;#x27;t get mentioned often is that the West had a &amp;quot;simpler&amp;quot; alphabet of 26 characters, 10 numbers, and a few punctuation marks (~20). Ok, add uppercase, and you&amp;#x27;re still at about 80 individual, distinct characters.&lt;p&gt;Chinese or Korean, on the other hand, needed many more characters. Creating the movable types for them was not an easy feat. Certainly more difficult than with the German equivalent.&lt;p&gt;In particular for Korea: Hangul [0], which is a &amp;quot;simpler&amp;quot; language that gradually took over Hanja [1] in Korea, was &amp;quot;created&amp;quot; only in the 15th century, not before. Earlier than that, even if Korea has the equivalent of &amp;quot;printing&amp;quot;, the complexity of it was higher than the one experienced with the west alphabet.&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Origin_of_Hangul&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Origin_of_Hangul&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hanja&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Hanja&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>igorkraw</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s actually easy enough to be done in 30 minutes (the guide says 15 but I&amp;#x27;m old and slow): &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanestrada.com&amp;#x2F;learntoreadkoreanin15minutes&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanestrada.com&amp;#x2F;learntoreadkoreanin15minutes&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;you simply insert padding-vocals and &amp;quot;silences&amp;quot; to make the syllable stuff line up, my name (Igor) becomes (silence)I-go-ru.</text></comment>