Taking a look at Sanskrit, it looks very cool. I think it's aesthetically better looking than Korean alphabet.
It's considered that by lay people, largely due to Korean patriotism, not by real linguists (can you provide a source?)
> an HN'er should be able to read and write Korean in about an hour.
So, you're talking about the alphabet used to write the language, not the language itself. At best you've proven that Korean has a highly regular writing system. But I'd argue that the average HNer could learn to read, for example, Spanish in about two minutes.
I didn't say the MOST, it's among the more scientific languages. I'm not pushing for Korean patriotism, that's just your own assumptions.
> So, you're talking about the alphabet used to write the language, not the language itself. At best you've proven that Korean has a highly regular writing system. But I'd argue that the average HNer could learn to read, for example, Spanish in about two minutes.
Hangul is the writing system that is uniquely different from a latin based system like Spanish. Your argument is moot.
> Hangul is the writing system that is uniquely different from a latin based system like Spanish.
How? They're just different alphabets. The only unique feature of Hangul is that all the letters making up a syllable are arranged in one square -- is that what you're referring to as making it uniquely different? If not, what?
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=korean+language&btnG=&hl...
> The only unique feature of Hangul is that all the letters making up a syllable are arranged in one square
That's one feature that makes it superior to say Chinese. Chinese character is a bitch to learn and it's been bastardized by the communist party to increase literacy.
Unfortunately the people in charge of the Revised Romanization decided that these rules should be applied to the Roman alphabet as well, so we have execrable constructions like "Daegu" or "bibimbab" which can't be pronounced from English spelling rules.
[0] http://www.ryanestrada.com/learntoreadkoreanin15minutes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatalization_%28sound_change...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology#Vowel_assimil...
That "ee" sound is known in IPA [0] as /i/. That sound is also the vowel counterpart to the semi-vowel /j/ [1, 2]. Within languages, /j/ has a tendency to palatize sounds. In the case of Korean, this has resulted in /s/ being conditioned to /ɕ/ before /i/, where /ɕ/ is the alveolo-palatal version of /s/. (This sound is technically different than "she", which is /ʃi/.)
This process of moving where a sound is pronounced is actually known as "assimilation", but this particular case of assimilation is via a palatal sound. That's why there's actually two palatalization terms in linguistics -- the one I linked above and this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatalization_%28phonetics%29
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...
[1] English "y" sound, as in "you" /ju/.
If you can't comprehend what you're reading, you're not reading. Learning the Korean alphabet is not learning Korean.
FWIW, only one dictionary definition I can find includes "comprehend" in the definition and it still falls under other definitions such as "speaking aloud written or printed material to other people".
I never claimed it was. My post was very specifically about learning to read and write Hangul.
With Hangul, you can start writing your own name, lot of English words in Korean which is understood in Korea. Even Konglish (Phonetically typed Korean in English) is understood to a certain degree.
Anything beyond that, you will need to learn the Korean words, but it gets you a lot farther than most languages.
No I don't have scientific evidence to support this but from anecdotal experiences. Somebody wants to write a paper on it let me know, I'll give you 0.1 bitcoin.
Learning the Latin alphabet doesn't mean you have learnt to read English.
And sure of course you can learn the Arabic alphabet quickly. It's a lot simpler than it looks.