I feel like the HN audience would really appreciate Korean and it's script, as it's said to be one of the most logical languages. You can read more about it here http://asiasociety.org/education/world%E2%80%99s-most-incred...
For example: Korean verb conjugations are massive [1] mainly because conjugations themselves are morphemes (or semi-words, if you don't know what it is) and not mutations or transformations thus the set of conjugations is essentially open. Native Korean speakers can probably easily list hundreds of different conjugations with different meanings.
[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXakcsoUkAEMPaj.jpg for example.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_verbs#Finite_verb_endin...
You need to be able to communicate mood, underrun expectations, frame or defy relationships ... in English, much of this is done by choice of words (especially adjectives and verbs) and word arrangement. In Korean, instead, while there's a giant repertoire of nouns, sentiment and relationships are more often injected via choice of grammar form and word choice is rather more straight-forward.
For example, Westerners make much of Korean's various speech levels ("politeness") which need to be used correctly depending on age or standing of addressor and addressee, and mostly (but not solely) take the shape of different verb endings. But of course English has a complex register system as well - but it's done via word choice and arrangement instead. It's the difference between "I'm sorry, I'm not able to help" and "F*ck off". In Korean, you can conceivably scale this difference by leaving off a word ending aimed at the wrong person combined with body language.
It's this difference - human interaction and the nature of eloquence remain the same in their essence, but the tools of expression have different mechanics - that's fascinating.
(Also, greetings from #rust!)
Letter shapes are featural rather than arbitrary, e.g. a consonant might visualize the tongue position used to make its sound. And yep letters graphically build on each other (normal to iotized vowels and normal to aspirated consonants are all formed the same way, respectively, by adding a stroke).
Hangul is a masterstroke of human cultural achievement. Had a lot to do with me emigrating to Korea! I agree with you that there's a lot of geeky audience appeal to it (including even its origin story of a bunch of smart people applying state of the art knowledge of the day to enable others by freely disseminating it).