ANSWER: Very tough.
I’ve at all times suspected that the Korean language was initially simply an outdated Chinese language dialect as a substitute of some distinctive language with unknown origins, as many students appear to counsel. There are simply too many similarities between the Korean and Chinese language languages. Furthermore, Korea is simply too near China geographically to have been capable of keep away from the affect of the Chinese language language over the previous few thousand years.
Anyway, the video beneath made me surprise how Koreans discovered to pronounce the tens of 1000’s of Chinese language characters earlier than the invention of Hangeul (한글), the Korean alphabet. They’d have needed to both hear the Chinese language pronounce the characters after which attempt to bear in mind the 1000’s of various pronunciations, or they might have needed to study the meanings of the totally different characters after which assign their very own pronunciations, one thing that I feel would have been much less probably. However what I’m actually interested in is how the Chinese language got here up with their pronunciations of the characters.
Chinese language characters are usually only one syllable. Does that imply that each one Chinese language phrases prior to now had been only one syllable? I type of doubt it. As a result of even with the 4 Chinese language tones, the Chinese language would have had a tough time speaking with simply one-syllable phrases. So, how did they provide you with the pronunciations for the tens of 1000’s of characters they’ve? The best way I feel they most likely did it was to take only one syllable of a multisyllable Chinese language phrase and assign it to a singular character with the which means of that multisyllable phrase. The Chinese language would usually not have been capable of perceive the phrase by listening to simply the one syllable, however they might have been capable of perceive the phrase in the event that they noticed the distinctive Chinese language character assigned to that syllable. In different phrases, they might have been capable of learn it.
Anyway, all of that is most likely defined someplace by somebody who is aware of what they’re speaking about, however I’ve not learn something about it, so all of that is simply my speaking out loud to myself.