Apparently there are people who lack any alphabet for their spoken language. You find such groups for example on some of the 10.000 islands of Indonesia – that’s what linguists from South Korea are reporting. But these minorities are ready to embrace “Hunminjeonguem” -nowdays called “Hangeul” – the Korean alphabet, researchers found out.

The aphabet was invented some hundred years ago as an alternative to the rather complex Chinese characters. Hangeul (or Hangul) is well known for its logical design: It has 24 letters – ten vowels and 14 consonants — and is capable of expressing 11,000 different sounds.

Since last year, another group of Korean linguists has been working together with ethnic minorities in Yunnan, China, to preserve their cultural heritage: They speak with eldery tribe members, “walking museums” and try to develop a custom Hangeul writing system to record it all. Some of the minority groups in Yunnan lost their language altogether, adopting Mandarin or other ethnic languages.

(via Omniglot)