특별기고 : 몽골어의 누리글 표기의 의의 - 정음이 왜 누리글인가 ?

Why Should the OPA Be the Global Writing System ?

Humanity seems to have overcome the communication barriers of the past and achieved free flow of ideas through the development of a global electronic network, or cyberspace, by the new information and communication technology. Nevertheless, there still remain numerous disparities and inequalities among countries and communities in accessing and providing information, also known as the digital divide. The digital divide from language, may bring about discrimination in information access among different peoples and impoverish cultural diversity of mankind. The biggest technological challenge in promoting multilingual communication in cyberspace may be digitalization of writing system. To promote use of multilingualism and universal access to information in all languages in cyberspace, some proposals and implementations can be suggested. It appears especially appropriate to recommend the use of The Korean Alphabet of 1446, or the Orthophonic Alphabet(hereafter, OPA) as Unicode in the cyberspace. Reasons for favoring such a recommendation are very succinct and concrete, since the graphic functions of the OPA are visually captured by the cineradiographic techniques and are indentified as the Global Writing System. This shape-function relationship of the OPA script has been sufficiently verified. The fifth-six OPA for transcription/transliteration of the Mandarin Chinese; One hundred twenty-six OPA symbols as the counterpart of the IPA are generated in accordance with the actual speech sounds and their associated phonetic/phyiological evidences. The OPA should be the global writing system for the ortho-transcription of the global language. Ⅰ. The OPA is the Most Efficient Script for Universal Access to Information in all languages in cyberspace. (1) Graphic shapes of the OPA are designed by depicting the Articulatory-Acoustic correlates of speech sounds. That is to say, there exists a direct correlation between the letter shape and its associated speech sounds. Therefore, the OPA is a script that can correctly transcribe an entire range of speech sounds. As logn as the phonetic information and associated physiological data are given, letter shapes can be generated according to the given phonetic description. (2) The OPA is the voiceprint/spectrogram of speech sounds , because it is the Visualized Structure of the Multi-dimensions of Speech Phenomena. We may define the OPA as the Visible Speech Sounds. The OPA is a script where there exists one to one correspondence between each segmental sound and a script/grapheme. (3) The OPA is the easiest and most efficient script to master. King Sejong himself, the inventor of the Korean alphabet of 1446, stated: It is the Orthophonic Alphabet that can master before one morning is over, and it can be learned without a teacher. With reference to the multi-dimensional applicability of the OPA, the following suggestions can drawn: 1. It can be the universally applicable script for the Ortho-transcription of speech sounds in a global sense. 2. It could be the replacement for the IPA, because the graphic symbols used in the IPA are cumbersome and put to much burden on memorization. 3. It can be the Standard Graphic Symbol to be used as an internet tool, i.e., the Unicode for international communication and information as well as language processing and accessing. 4. It could be the script that can eradicate illiteracy for those whose writing system is cumbersome to learn. 5. It could be endangered languages, which lack a proper writing system. 6. The graphically displayed symbols on the computer monitor of the voice recognition system could use the OPA as it can portray and visualize the multi-dimensions of speech phenomena, i.e., places of articulation. manner of articulation and perceived discrete sounds by graphically representing them. Thus the OPA is the most appropriate writing system of the Voice Dictation. Ⅱ. The OPA is the script to accelerate the Voice Recognition