[nosignal]

Hangul, the Korean writing system, is at once phonetic and syllabic. Each "symbol" represents a syllable, but each sub-symbol represents a particular sound in the syllable; and each sub-sub-symbol encodes phonetic information about how it should be pronounced. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul#Letter_design for a better explanation.

A binary representation of the Hangul system could be very interesting. Use the symbol 1 for "vowel base" and +1 for "high", +2 for "high front", +3 for "high back"… You could eventually have each byte represent a syllable. It'd be like chmod commands + phonetics.

There goes my evening…

[noonat]

I've been learning Hangul recently, and now every language that doesn't encode syllables into the writing system just seems immensely flawed to me. Hangul seems like a very intuitive, logical writing system. There are relatively few exceptions to the rules it sets out, though I think that's likely because it's such a young language -- more and more seem to be creeping in over time as dialects evolve.

[meepmorp]

> I think that's likely because it's such a young language

Do you mean language or writing system? Hangul is ~500 years old, comparatively new for a somewhat widely used writing system, though it's an odd case given that it's not really adapted from another system. The Korean language itself is much older.

[noonat]

Yes, sorry, I meant the writing system.

[meepmorp]

I'm sorry for being a pedantic d-bag.

[Cushman]

Thanks for the link! I've never studied Korean before, looks quite interesting. I'd also be curious to see if there were a way to merge the phonetically featural traits of Hangul with the narrowly mathematical nature of dotsies. Do update us with where you get to thinking about Chmodish :)