Korean Language

The KoreanLanguage was once like Mandarin and Cantonese -- a different spoken language that used the shared Chinese characters. Chinese characters are a pretty major barrier to literacy, so in the 14th century, a Korean king convened a national linguistic council to create an easier written form for Koreans. They invented the Korean phonetic alphabet, which looks quite a bit like Chinese characters but is phonetically based, so much easier to learn.

Each "block" represents one spoken syllable. The character in the upper-left represents the beginning consonant, the character in the upper-right represents the vowel sound, and the character in the bottom represents the ending consonant.

The written KoreanLanguage is the only widely used written language to have been invented in such an organized, formal manner.

Serbo-Croatian likewise

Looking online for info about the Serbo-Croatian language, I was unable to find much information about it having such an invented written form. Can you give us more specifics, or cites, or something? Sounds interesting.

I believe the Thai writing system was also artificially created by one of the Thai Kings a long time ago.

The KoreanLanguage and Hangul(Korean characters) must be distinguished. The KoreanLanguage was not like Chinese language, but it didn't have a character system and since borrowed the Chinese character system to write down in a translated Chinese language. Their literal and verbal life didn't quite match before the birth of Hangul.

Hangul is usually appreciated from many linguists as the most developed character system in the history. Its advantages come from the correspondence between the form and the function. Moreover, it was built with philosophy -- Eastern philosophy Ying-Yang and Five Elements. Consonants are designed as representing Ying(the minus), vowels as Yang(the plus). So the consonants are designed in concrete shapes, whereas the vowels are designed in abstract principles. For example, as right-hand side is yang and left-hand side is ying, if there is a "point" on the right, the vowel sounds light and upward; if the point is on the left, it sounds dark, heavy and downward. If there are two points on the right, it sounds ever lighter and brighter. --JuneKim

--- I don't think the word "Artificially" is properly used in the comment about the Thai writing system. Anyone can create a literary system and the word artificially cannot be applied sensically to it. A Thai king would have every right to create a Thai literary system as would a Korean king a Korean literary system. Since no literary system is natural, and therefore no literary system is a manmade imitation, the word artificial should not be applied to a literary system. Perhaps one system was developed because another was difficult, but that would be a normal progression of events and does not imply artificiality.

Many Asian languages now have Romanized versions; in some cases (i.e. Vietnamese) the Romanized written form is the preferred written form of the language. Written Vietnamese was IIRC developed by French missionaries several centuries ago.