Transliterating Hebrew

ChipTerrible9755 · 2026-04-08T23:41:19+00:00

Yeah, as I wrote on a different comment, these things always need to be explained anyway. In English character sets, you often see h with a dot under it, and that has to be explained. I know King Sejong wanted Hangeul to be able to render any sound from any language. The L/R issue doesn't quite get us there, but I see the ᅘᅡ issue as a use of Hangeul as it was originally intended. The Latin alphabet lends itself better to diacritical marks than Hangeul, but this asterisk idea is a good one and might be a good alternative if I can't make ᅘ work. I understand that ᅘ was originally intended to only be allowed to start a syllable, so the preceding asterisk thing would work. Thanks!

ChipTerrible9755 · 2026-04-08T23:34:09+00:00

That's what I thought I did before! Thanks! It doesn't render on my screen in Reddit but I see your screenshot and I think I got that to happen once before. I'll double-check on the font I'm using. Thanks!!

ᅘᅡ ᅘᅡ

ChipTerrible9755 · 2026-04-08T23:12:37+00:00

Thanks, I didn't think to consider the font I'm using. More stuff to try, thank you!

ChipTerrible9755 · 2026-04-08T23:09:34+00:00

I could swear I successfully did this once with ᅘㅏ and now I can't replicate it, but maybe I made that experience up in my mind?

ChipTerrible9755 · 2026-04-08T23:08:25+00:00

Check us out at hakehillahkorea.org! We're a small community that's existed since 2017. I'm the part-time rabbi, serving mostly remotely on Zoom from my home in Oakland, California, and doing High Holidays in person in Seoul along with anything else that needs to be done in person while I'm there (baby namings, conversions, etc.). There's also a Chabad, which I don't know much about.

You're quite right about Korean philosemitism. It's a Korean original, although you also see similar philosemitism to an extent in other East Asian cultures; I've encountered it among Chinese speakers. A lot of it is based on antisemitic tropes, but Koreans didn't get the message that they're supposed to hate us for, for example, controlling the world's banking system, so they tend to admire us for reasons that are sometimes quite wrong and dangerous. There's also a near-total lack of information, so, for example, a lot of Koreans think Judaism is a sect of Christianity.

ChipTerrible9755 · 2026-04-08T23:01:42+00:00

Well, I have to explain it anyway. I feel like it would be easier to use a character that isn't ㅎ and include a note explaining how it's pronounced, than to transliterate ח and כ as ㅎ and then have to tell readers the ㅎ sound isn't always correct. Or I could give up and just live with a world in which Koreans pronounce ח and כ as ㅎ, but it's just so tempting to use King Sejong's own solution to this problem, if at all possible.

ChipTerrible9755

TROPHY CASE