How did that work out for Korea when they switched to Hangul?
How did that work out for Korea when they switched to Hangul?
They rely purely on context to distinguish {"apples", "apologies"}, {"mayor", "market"}, {"stomach", "ship", "pear", "double"}, {"acting", "delays", "smoke"} so on and so forth if what I'm scrolling is right. There's no tonal or character distinction. That surely isn't great.
And back when it was first introduced, it certainly did wonders for literacy. Although it should be noted that original Hangul was more phonemic wrt its contemporary Korean, and the letter shapes were a bit simpler as well.
Gradually more books and newspapers followed suit, because pretty much everybody found that writing everything in Korean letters actually make communication less ambiguous and easier to understand. If your phrase is ambiguous between whether someone's offering apples or apologies, then you just change the word or add additional context to make it clear which one is being offered. It's no different from how English speakers deal with bear/bear, tear/tear, arm/arm, ground/ground, and so on.