Friday Facts #436 - Lost in Translation

[bighungryjames]

For the Korean language, it would be helpful if you add search by the first consonant (Choseong, "초성") of each syllable. For instance, all of the following letters start with identical consonant, Giyeok(ㄱ, G): 가(Ga) 각(Gak) 교(Gyo). Koreans use this search function every time.

For example, in the Korean localization, the Iron Plate is "철판", which could be found by typing "ㅊㅍ".

Technically, it wouldn't be too hard to implement either, because the unicode code points for Korean syllable-characters that begin with identical consonants are grouped together. For instance, syllables that start with Giyeok are mapped from U+AC00 ("가", Ga) to U+AE4B("깋", Gih). Then the next consonant Ssang-giyeok begins, from U+AE4C ("까", Kka) to U+B097("낗", Kkig). The modular nature of Korean syllable characters makes searching by only typing these consonants, which Koreans use a lot in Google search.