Hangul

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul[a] (English: /ˈhɑːnɡuːl/ HAHN-

gool;[1] Korean: 한글) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글) in North
Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language.[2]
[3][4]
The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the
speech organs used to pronounce them, and they are systematically
modified to indicate phonetic features; similarly, the vowel letters are
systematically modified for related sounds, making Hangul a featural
writing system.[5][6][7] It has been described as a syllabic alphabet as it
combines the features of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems.[8][6]

Korean alphabet
한글 / 조선글
Hangul (Hangeul) / Chosŏn'gŭl
:
 "Chosŏn'gŭl" (top) and "Hangul"
(bottom)

Script type Featural alphabet

Creator Sejong of Joseon

Time period 1443 CE –

present

Direction Current practice:

left to right, new
line underneath
Original: top to
bottom, new line
to the left;
:
 alternatively right
to left with new
line underneath

Languages Korean and

Jejuan
(standard);
Cia-Cia (limited
use)

ISO 15924

ISO 15924 Hang (286),

Hangul (Hangŭl,
Hangeul)
Jamo (for the
jamo subset)

Unicode
:
 Unicode

Unicode alias Hangul

Unicode range U+1100–U+11FF

U+3130–
U+318F
U+A960–
U+A97F
U+D7B0–
U+D7FF

Hangul was created in 1443 CE by King Sejong the Great in an attempt

to increase literacy by serving as a complement (or alternative) to the
logographic Sino-Korean Hanja, which had been used by Koreans as
their primary script to write the Korean language since as early as the
Gojoseon period (spanning more than a thousand years and ending
around 108 BCE), along with the usage of Classical Chinese.[9][10] The
development of the Hangul alphabet is traditionally ascribed to Sejong,
fourth king of the Chosŏn (Yi) dynasty.[11]

Modern Hangul orthography uses 24 basic letters: 14 consonant

letters[b] and 10 vowel letters.[c] There are also 27 complex letters that
are formed by combining the basic letters: 5 tense consonant letters,[d]
:
 11 complex consonant letters,[e] and 11 complex vowel letters.[f] Four
basic letters in the original alphabet are no longer used: 1 vowel letter[g]
and 3 consonant letters.[h] Korean letters are written in syllabic blocks
with the alphabetic letters arranged in two dimensions. For example,
the Korean word for "honeybee" (kkulbeol) is written as 꿀벌, not ㄲㅜㄹ
ㅂㅓㄹ.[12] The syllables begin with a consonant letter, then a vowel
letter, and then potentially another consonant letter called a batchim
(Korean: 받침). If the syllable begins with a vowel sound, the consonant
ㅇ (ng) acts as a silent placeholder. However, when ㅇ starts a sentence
or is placed after a long pause, it marks a glottal stop. Syllables may
begin with basic or tense consonants but not complex ones. The vowel
can be basic or complex, and the second consonant can be basic,
complex or a limited number of tense consonants. How the syllable is
structured depends if the baseline of the vowel symbol is horizontal or
vertical. If the baseline is vertical, the first consonant and vowel are
written above the second consonant (if present), but all components
are written individually from top to bottom in the case of a horizontal
baseline.[12]

As in traditional Chinese and Japanese writing, as well as many other

texts in East Asia, Korean texts were traditionally written top to bottom,
right to left, as is occasionally still the way for stylistic purposes.
However, Korean is now typically written from left to right with spaces
between words serving as dividers, unlike in Japanese and Chinese.[7]
Hangul is the official writing system throughout Korea, both North and
South. It is a co-official writing system in the Yanbian Korean
Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County in
Jilin Province, China. Hangul has also seen limited use by speakers of
the Cia-Cia language in Indonesia.
:
 Names

Official names
:
 Korean name (North Korea)
Chosŏn'gŭl 조선글

Hancha 朝鮮㐎

Revised Joseon(-)geul
Romanization

McCune– Chosŏn'gŭl
Reischauer

IPA Korean
pronunciation:
[tso.sɔn.ɡɯl]
:
 Korean name (South Korea)
Hangul 한글

Hanja 韓㐎

Revised Han(-)geul
Romanization

McCune– Han'gŭl[13]
Reischauer

IPA Korean
pronunciation:
[ha(ː)n.ɡɯl]
:
 The word "Hangul", written in the Korean
alphabet

The Korean alphabet was originally named Hunminjeong'eum (훈민정음)

by King Sejong the Great in 1443.[10] Hunminjeong'eum is also the
document that explained logic and science behind the script in 1446.

The name hangeul (한글) was coined by Korean linguist Ju Si-gyeong in

1912. The name combines the ancient Korean word han (한), meaning
great, and geul (글), meaning script. The word han is used to refer to
Korea in general, so the name also means Korean script.[14] It has been
romanized in multiple ways:

Hangeul or han-geul in the

Revised Romanization of Korean,
which the South Korean
government uses in English
publications and encourages for
all purposes.
:
 Han'gŭl in the McCune–
Reischauer system, is often
capitalized and rendered without
the diacritics when used as an
English word, Hangul, as it
appears in many English
dictionaries.
hān kul in the Yale romanization,
a system recommended for
technical linguistic studies.
North Koreans call the alphabet Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글), after Chosŏn, the
North Korean name for Korea.[15] A variant of the McCune–Reischauer
system is used there for romanization.

Other names
:
 Until the mid-20th century, the Korean elite preferred to write using
Chinese characters called Hanja. They referred to Hanja as jinseo (진서/
真書) meaning true letters. Some accounts say the elite referred to the
Korean alphabet derisively as 'amkeul (암클) meaning women's script,
and 'ahaetgeul (아햇글) meaning children's script, though there is no
written evidence of this.[16]

Supporters of the Korean alphabet referred to it as jeong'eum (정음/正

音) meaning correct pronunciation, gungmun (국문/國文) meaning
national script, and eonmun (언문/諺文) meaning vernacular script.[16]

History

Creation
Koreans primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native
phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years,
including Idu script, Hyangchal, Gugyeol and Gakpil.[17][18][19][20]
However, many lower class uneducated Koreans were illiterate due to
the difficulty of learning the Korean and Chinese languages, as well as
the large number of Chinese characters that are used.[21] To promote
literacy among the common people, the fourth king of the Joseon
dynasty, Sejong the Great, personally created and promulgated a new
alphabet.[3][21][22] Although it is widely assumed that King Sejong
ordered the Hall of Worthies to invent Hangul, contemporary records
such as the Veritable Records of King Sejong and Jeong Inji's preface
to the Hunminjeongeum Haerye emphasize that he invented it himself.
[23]
:
 The Korean alphabet was designed so that people with little education
could learn to read and write. [24] According to the Hunminjeongeum
Haerye Edition, King Sejong expressed his intention to understand the
language of the people in this country and to express their meanings
more conveniently in writing. He noted that the shapes of the traditional
Chinese characters, as well as factors such as the thickness, stroke
count, and order of strokes in calligraphy, were extremely complex,
making it difficult for people to recognize and understand them
individually. A popular saying about the alphabet is, "A wise man can
acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even a stupid
man can learn them in the space of ten days."[25]

A page from the

Hunminjeong'eum Eonhae. The
Hangul-only column, third from
the left (나랏말 ㆍ미), has pitch-
accent diacritics to the left of the
syllable blocks.

The project was completed in late December 1443 or January 1444,

and described in 1446 in a document titled Hunminjeong'eum (The
Proper Sounds for the Education of the People), after which the
alphabet itself was originally named.[16] The publication date of the
Hunminjeongeum, October 9, became Hangul Day in South Korea. Its
:
 North Korean equivalent, Chosŏn'gŭl Day, is on January 15.

Another document published in 1446 and titled Hunminjeong'eum

Haerye (Hunminjeong'eum Explanation and Examples) was discovered
in 1940. This document explains that the design of the consonant
letters is based on articulatory phonetics and the design of the vowel
letters is based on the principles of yin and yang and vowel harmony.
[26]
After the creation of Hangul, people from the lower class or the
commoners had a chance to be literate. They learned how to read and
write Korean, not just the upper classes and literary elite. They learn
Hangul independently without formal schooling or such.[27]

Opposition
The Korean alphabet faced opposition in the 1440s by the literary elite,
including Choe Manri and other Korean Confucian scholars. They
believed Hanja was the only legitimate writing system. They also saw
the circulation of the Korean alphabet as a threat to their status.[21]
However, the Korean alphabet entered popular culture as King Sejong
had intended, used especially by women and writers of popular fiction.
[28]

King Yeonsangun banned the study and publication of the Korean

alphabet in 1504, after a document criticizing the king was published.
[29]
Similarly, King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun, a
governmental institution related to Hangul research, in 1506.[30]
:
 Revival
The late 16th century, however, saw a revival of the Korean alphabet as
gasa and sijo poetry flourished. In the 17th century, the Korean
alphabet novels became a major genre.[31] However, the use of the
Korean alphabet had gone without orthographical standardization for
so long that spelling had become quite irregular.[28]

Songangasa, a collection of
poems by Jeong Cheol, printed in
1768.

In 1796, the Dutch scholar Isaac Titsingh became the first person to
bring a book written in Korean to the Western world. His collection of
books included the Japanese book Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu (An
Illustrated Description of Three Countries) by Hayashi Shihei.[32] This
book, which was published in 1785, described the Joseon Kingdom[33]
:
 and the Korean alphabet.[34] In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of
Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged
publication of Titsingh's French translation.[35]

Thanks to growing Korean nationalism, the Gabo Reformists' push, and

Western missionaries' promotion of the Korean alphabet in schools and
literature,[36] the Hangul Korean alphabet was adopted in official
documents for the first time in 1894.[29] Elementary school texts began
using the Korean alphabet in 1895, and Tongnip Sinmun, established in
1896, was the first newspaper printed in both Korean and English.[37]

Reforms and suppression

under Japanese rule
After the Japanese annexation, which occurred in 1910, Japanese was
made the official language of Korea. However, the Korean alphabet was
still taught in Korean-established schools built after the annexation and
Korean was written in a mixed Hanja-Hangul script, where most lexical
roots were written in Hanja and grammatical forms in the Korean
alphabet. Japan banned earlier Korean literature from public schooling,
which became mandatory for children.[38]

The orthography of the Korean alphabet was partially standardized in

1912, when the vowel arae-a (ㆍ)—which has now disappeared from
Korean—was restricted to Sino-Korean roots: the emphatic consonants
were standardized to ㅺ, ㅼ, ㅽ, ㅆ, ㅾ and final consonants restricted to
ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ. Long vowels were marked by a diacritic
dot to the left of the syllable, but this was dropped in 1921.[28]
:
 A second colonial reform occurred in 1930. The arae-a was abolished:
the emphatic consonants were changed to ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ and more
final consonants ㄷ, ㅈ, ㅌ, ㅊ, ㅍ, ㄲ, ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅄ were allowed,
making the orthography more morphophonemic. The double
consonant ㅆ was written alone (without a vowel) when it occurred
between nouns, and the nominative particle 가 was introduced after
vowels, replacing 이.[28]

Ju Si-gyeong, the linguist who had coined the term Hangul to replace
Eonmun or Vulgar Script in 1912, established the Korean Language
Research Society (later renamed the Hangul Society), which further
reformed orthography with Standardized System of Hangul in 1933.
The principal change was to make the Korean alphabet as
morphophonemically practical as possible given the existing letters.[28]
A system for transliterating foreign orthographies was published in
1940.

Japan banned the Korean language from schools and public offices in
1938 and excluded Korean courses from the elementary education in
1941 as part of a policy of cultural genocide.[39][40]

Further reforms
The definitive modern Korean alphabet orthography was published in
1946, just after Korean independence from Japanese rule. In 1948,
North Korea attempted to make the script perfectly morphophonemic
through the addition of new letters, and in 1953, Syngman Rhee in
South Korea attempted to simplify the orthography by returning to the
colonial orthography of 1921, but both reforms were abandoned after
only a few years.[28]
:
 Both North Korea and South Korea have used the Korean alphabet or
mixed script as their official writing system, with ever-decreasing use
of Hanja especially in the North.

In South Korea
Beginning in the 1970s, Hanja began to experience a gradual decline in
commercial or unofficial writing in the South due to government
intervention, with some South Korean newspapers now only using
Hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms. However, as
Korean documents, history, literature and records throughout its history
until the contemporary period were written primarily in Literary Chinese
using Hanja as its primary script, a good working knowledge of Chinese
characters especially in academia is still important for anyone who
wishes to interpret and study older texts from Korea, or anyone who
wishes to read scholarly texts in the humanities.[41]

A high proficiency in Hanja is also useful for understanding the

etymology of Sino-Korean words as well as to enlarge one's Korean
vocabulary.[41]

In North Korea
North Korea instated Hangul as its exclusive writing system in 1949 on
the orders of Kim Il Sung of the Workers' Party of Korea, and officially
banned the use of Hanja.[42]
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 Non-Korean languages
Systems that employed Hangul letters with modified rules were
attempted by linguists such as Hsu Tsao-te and Ang Ui-jin to transcribe
Taiwanese Hokkien, a Sinitic language, but the usage of Chinese
characters ultimately ended up being the most practical solution and
was endorsed by the Ministry of Education (Taiwan).[43][44][45]

The Hunminjeong'eum Society in Seoul attempted to spread the use of

Hangul to unwritten languages of Asia.[46] In 2009, it was unofficially
adopted by the town of Baubau, in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, to
write the Cia-Cia language.[47][48][49][50]

A number of Indonesian Cia-Cia speakers who visited Seoul generated

large media attention in South Korea, and they were greeted on their
arrival by Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul.[51]

Letters
:
 Korean alphabet letters and
pronunciation

Letters in the Korean alphabet are called jamo (자모). There are 14
consonants (자음) and 10 vowels (모음) used in the modern alphabet.
They were first named in Hunmongjahoe, a hanja textbook written by
Choe Sejin. Additionally, there are 19 complex letters with 5 tense
:
 consonants, and 14 complex vowels, this are made by combining with
other vowels.

In typography design and in IME automata, the letters that make up a

block are called jaso (자소).

Consonants

The shape of
tongue when
pronouncing ㄱ (g)

The shape of
tongue when
pronouncing ㄴ (n)

The shape of teeth

and tongue when
pronouncing ㅅ (s)
:
 ㅇ (ng) is similar to
the throat hole.

ㅁ (m) is similar to a
closed mouth.

The chart below shows all 19 consonants in South Korean alphabetic

order with Revised Romanization equivalents for each letter and
pronunciation in IPA (see Korean phonology for more).

Hangul ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ

Romanization g kk n d tt r m b pp s ss ' [i] j jj

Initial
IPA /k/ /k͈/ /n/ /t/ /t ͈/ /ɾ/ /m/ /p/ /p͈/ /s/ /s/͈ silent /t͡ɕ/ /t ͈ ͡ɕ͈/

k k n t l m p t t ng t
Romanization – – –
Final g kk n d l m b s ss ng j

IPA /k̚ / /n/ /t̚ / – /ɭ/ /m/ /p̚ / – /t̚ / /ŋ/ /t̚ / –

ㅇ is silent syllable-initially and is used as a placeholder when the

syllable starts with a vowel. ㄸ, ㅃ, and ㅉ are never used syllable-finally.

Consonants are broadly categorized into either obstruents (sounds

produced when airflow either completely stops (i.e., a plosive
consonant) or passes through a narrow opening (i.e., a fricative)) or
sonorants (sounds produced when air flows out with little to no
obstruction through the mouth, nose, or both).[52] The chart below lists
the Korean consonants by their respective categories and
:
 subcategories.

Consonants in Standard Korean (orthography)[53]

Alveolo-
Bilabial Alveolar Velar Glottal
palatal

Lax p (ㅂ) t (ㄷ) k (ㄱ)

Stop Tense p͈ (ㅃ) t ͈ (ㄸ) k͈ (ㄲ)

(plosive) kʰ
Aspirated pʰ (ㅍ) tʰ (ㅌ)
(ㅋ)

Obstruent Lax s (ㅅ) h (ㅎ)

Fricative
Tense s͈ (ㅆ)

Lax t͡ɕ (ㅈ)

Affricate Tense t ͈ ͡ɕ͈ (ㅉ)

Aspirated t͡ɕʰ (ㅊ)

Nasal m (ㅁ) n (ㄴ) ŋ (ㅇ)

Sonorant Liquid (lateral
l (ㄹ)
approximant)

All Korean obstruents are voiceless in that the larynx does not vibrate
when producing those sounds and are further distinguished by degree
of aspiration and tenseness. The tensed consonants are produced by
constricting the vocal chords while heavily aspirated consonants (such
as the Korean ㅍ, /pʰ/) are produced by opening them.[52]

Korean sonorants are voiced.

:
 Consonant assimilation
The pronunciation of a syllable-final consonant (which may already
differ from its syllable-initial sound) may be affected by the following
letter, and vice-versa. The table below describes these assimilation
rules. Spaces are left blank when no modification is made to the normal
syllable-final sound.
:
 Assimilation: pronunciation of the combination between a preceding
syllable block's final letter-sound and a subsequent syllable blocks
initial letter-sound (e.g. 강루 – kang+ru = kang+nu, 있어 – it+eo =
iss+eo, 합니다 – hap+ni+da = ham-ni-da)
Preceding syllable block's final letter-sound

ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ

(k) (k) (n) (t) (l) (m) (p) (t) (t) (ng)

ㄱ
k+k n+g t+g l+g m+g b+g t+g -
(g)

ㄴ
ng+n n+n l+n m+n m+n t+n n+t
(n)

ㄷ
k+d n+d t+t l+d m+d p+d t+t t+t
(d)

ㄹ
g+n n+n l+l m+n m+n - ng+n
(r)

ㅁ
Subsequent g+m n+m t+m l+m m+m m+m t+m - ng+m
(m)
syllable
ㅂ
block's g+b p+p t+b -
(b)
initial letter
ㅅ
ss+s
(s)

ㅇ
g kk+h n t r m p s ss ng+h
(∅)

ㅈ
t+ch
(j)

r/
ㅎ
k kk+h n+h t
(h) l+h m+h p t -
:
 Consonant assimilation occurs as a result of intervocalic voicing. When
surrounded by vowels or sonorant consonants such as ㅁ or ㄴ, a stop
will take on the characteristics of its surrounding sound. Since plain
stops (like ㄱ /k/) are produced with relaxed vocal cords that are not
tensed, they are more likely to be affected by surrounding voiced
sounds (which are produced by vocal cords that are vibrating).[52]

Below are examples of how lax consonants (ㅂ /p/, ㄷ /t/, ㅈ /t͡ɕ/, ㄱ /k/)
change due to location in a word. Letters in bolded interface show
intervocalic weakening, or the softening of the lax consonants to their
sonorous counterparts.[52]

밥 [pap̚ ] – 'rice'
보리밥 [poɾibap̚ ] – 'barley mixed
with rice'
ㄷ

다 [ta] – 'all'
맏 [mat̚ ] – 'oldest'
맏아들 [madadɯɭ] – 'oldest son'
ㅈ
:
 죽 [t͡ ɕuk] – 'porridge'
콩죽 [kʰoŋd͡ ʑuk̚ ] – 'bean
porridge'
ㄱ

공 [koŋ] – 'ball'
새 공 [sɛgoŋ] – 'new ball'
The consonants ㄹ and ㅎ also experience weakening. The liquid ㄹ,
when in an intervocalic position, will be weakened to a [ɾ]. For example,
the final ㄹ in the word 말 ([maɭ], 'word') changes when followed by the
subject marker 이 (ㅇ being a sonorant consonant), and changes to a [ɾ]
to become [maɾi].

ㅎ /h/ is very weak and is usually deleted in Korean words, as seen in

words like 괜찮아요 /kwɛnt͡ɕʰanhajo/ [kwɛnt͡ɕʰanajo]. However, instead of
being completely deleted, it leaves remnants by devoicing the following
sound or by acting as a glottal stop.[52]

Lax consonants are tensed when following other obstruents due to the
fact that the first obstruent's articulation is not released. Tensing can
be seen in words like 입구 ('entrance') /ipku/ which is pronounced as
[ip̚ k͈u].

Consonants in the Korean alphabet can be combined into one of 11

consonant clusters, which always appear in the final position in a
syllable block. They are: ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄽ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, and ㅄ.
:
 Consonant cluster combinations

(e.g. [in isolation] 닭 dak; [preceding another syllable block] 없다 – eop-da,

앉아 anj-a)

Preceding ㄳ ㄵ ㄶ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ
syllable block's
(gs) (nj) (nh) (lg) (lm) (lb) (ls) (lt) (lp) (lh)
final letter

(pronunciation k or l or
k n n m l l p l
in isolation) l* p**

ㅇ
Subsequent k+s n+j n+h l+g l+m l+b l+s l+t l+p l+h
(∅)
block's
ㄷ l+d or
initial letter k+d n+d n+t k+d m+d l+d l+d p+d l+t
(d) p+d**

* Before ㄱ, the cluster ㄺ is pronounced as l (e.g., 맑게 malge [mal.k͈e]).

** For certain words, ㄼ may be pronounced as p (e.g., 밟다 bapda

[pa:p̚ .t ͈a], 넓죽하다 neopjukhada [nʌp̚ .t ͈ɕu.kʰa.da]).

In cases where consonant clusters are followed by words beginning

with ㅇ, the consonant cluster is resyllabified through a phonological
phenomenon called liaison. In words where the first consonant of the
consonant cluster is ㅂ,ㄱ, or ㄴ (the stop consonants), articulation
stops and the second consonant cannot be pronounced without
releasing the articulation of the first once. Hence, in words like 값 /kaps/
('price'), the ㅅ cannot be articulated and the word is thus pronounced
as [kap̚ ]. The second consonant is usually revived when followed by a
word with initial ㅇ (값이 → [kap̚ .si]. Other examples include 삶 (/salm/
[sam], 'life'). The ㄹ in the final consonant cluster is generally lost in
pronunciation, however when followed by the subject marker 이, the ㄹ
is revived and the ㅁ takes the place of the blank consonant ㅇ. Thus, 삶
이 is pronounced as [sal.mi].
:
 In cases where clusters are followed by syllables beginning with a
consonant (e.g., ㄷ as shown above), the cluster generally maintains its
isolated pronunciation; however, the cluster's lost consonant may
sometimes revive and assimilate into the following syllable's consonant.
For example, in 않다 (/anh.ta/ → [an.tʰa]) the lost ㅎ is assimilated into
the following syllable and aspirates ㄷ. Similarly, in 앉하다 (/antɕ.ha.ta/ →
[an.tɕʰa.da]) the lost ㅈ is revived and aspirated by the following ㅎ.[54]

Vowels
The chart below shows the 21 vowels used in the modern Korean
alphabet in South Korean alphabetic order with Revised Romanization
equivalents for each letter and pronunciation in IPA (see Korean
phonology for more).

Hangul ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ

Revised
a ae ya yae eo e yeo ye o wa wae oe yo u wo
Romanization

/ø/ ~
IPA /a/ /ɛ/ /ja/ /jɛ/ /ʌ/ /e/ /jʌ/ /je/ /o/ /wa/ /wɛ/ /jo/ /u/ /wʌ/
[we]

The vowels are generally separated into two categories: monophthongs

and diphthongs. Monophthongs are produced with a single articulatory
movement (hence the prefix mono), while diphthongs feature an
articulatory change. Diphthongs have two constituents: a glide (or a
semivowel) and a monophthong. There is some disagreement about
exactly how many vowels are considered Korean's monophthongs; the
largest inventory features ten, while some scholars have proposed
:
 eight or nine. This divergence reveals two issues: whether Korean has
two front rounded vowels (i.e. /ø/ and /y/); and, secondly, whether
Korean has three levels of front vowels in terms of vowel height (i.e.
whether /e/ and /ɛ/ are distinctive).[53] Actual phonological studies done
by studying formant data show that current speakers of Standard
Korean do not differentiate between the vowels ㅔ and ㅐ in
pronunciation.[55]

Alphabetic order
Alphabetic order in the Korean alphabet is called the ganada order, (가
나다순) after the first three letters of the alphabet. The alphabetical
order of the Korean alphabet does not mix consonants and vowels.
Rather, first are velar consonants, then coronals, labials, sibilants, etc.
The vowels come after the consonants.[56]

The collation order of Korean in Unicode is based on the South Korean

order.

Historical orders
The order from the Hunminjeongeum in 1446 was:[57]

ㄱㄲㅋㆁㄷㄸㅌㄴㅂㅃㅍㅁㅈ
:
 ㅉㅊㅅㅆㆆㅎㆅㅇㄹㅿ
ㆍㅡㅣㅗㅏㅜㅓㅛㅑㅠㅕ
This is the basis of the modern alphabetic orders. It was before the
development of the Korean tense consonants and the double letters
that represent them, and before the conflation of the letters ㅇ (null)
and ㆁ (ng). Thus, when the North Korean and South Korean
governments implemented full use of the Korean alphabet, they
ordered these letters differently, with North Korea placing new letters at
the end of the alphabet and South Korea grouping similar letters
together.[58][59]

North Korean order

The double letters are placed after all the single letters (except the null
initial ㅇ, which goes at the end).

ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂㅅㅈㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ
ㄲㄸㅃㅆㅉㅇ
ㅏㅑㅓㅕㅗㅛㅜㅠㅡㅣㅐㅒㅔ
ㅖㅚㅟㅢㅘㅝㅙㅞ
:
 All digraphs and trigraphs, including the old diphthongs ㅐ and ㅔ, are
placed after the simple vowels, again maintaining Choe's alphabetic
order.

The order of the final letters (받침) is:

(none) ㄱ ㄳ ㄴ ㄵ ㄶ ㄷ ㄹ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ
ㄽㄾㄿㅀㅁㅂㅄㅅㅇㅈㅊㅋㅌ
ㅍㅎㄲㅆ
(None means there is no final letter.)

Unlike when it is initial, this ㅇ is pronounced, as the nasal ㅇ ng, which

occurs only as a final in the modern language. The double letters are
placed to the very end, as in the initial order, but the combined
consonants are ordered immediately after their first element.[58]

South Korean order

In the Southern order, double letters are placed immediately after their
single counterparts:

ㄱㄲㄴㄷㄸㄹㅁㅂㅃㅅㅆㅇㅈ
ㅉㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ
:
 ㅏㅐㅑㅒㅓㅔㅕㅖㅗㅘㅙㅚㅛ
ㅜㅝㅞㅟㅠㅡㅢㅣ
The modern monophthongal vowels come first, with the derived forms
interspersed according to their form: i is added first, then iotized, then
iotized with added i. Diphthongs beginning with w are ordered
according to their spelling, as ㅗ or ㅜ plus a second vowel, not as
separate digraphs.

The order of the final letters is:

(none) ㄱ ㄲ ㄳ ㄴ ㄵ ㄶ ㄷ ㄹ ㄺ ㄻ
ㄼㄽㄾㄿㅀㅁㅂㅄㅅㅆㅇㅈㅊ
ㅋㅌㅍㅎ
Every syllable begins with a consonant (or the silent ㅇ) that is followed
by a vowel (e.g. ㄷ + ㅏ = 다). Some syllables such as 달 and 닭 have a
final consonant or final consonant cluster (받침). Thus, 399
combinations are possible for two-letter syllables and 10,773 possible
combinations for syllables with more than two letters (27 possible final
endings), for a total of 11,172 possible combinations of Korean alphabet
letters to form syllables.[58]

The sort order including archaic Hangul letters defined in the South
Korean national standard KS X 1026-1 is:[60]

Initial consonants: , , , ,
:
 , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
(filler; U+115F )
Medial vowels: (filler;
:
 U+1160 ), , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, ㆍ, , , , , ,‥
Final consonants: (none), , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
:
 , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , ,
, , , ,
:
 Sort order of Hangul consonants
defined in the South Korean national
standard KS X 1026-1
:
 Sort order of Hangul vowels defined
in the South Korean national
standard KS X 1026-1

Letter names

Korean consonants
0:17
names of the Korean consonant
letters (South Korean)
:
 Korean vowels
0:13
names of the Korean vowel letters

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media help.
Letters in the Korean alphabet were named by Korean linguist Choe
Sejin in 1527. South Korea uses Choe's traditional names, most of
which follow the format of letter + i + eu + letter. Choe described these
names by listing Hanja characters with similar pronunciations. However,
as the syllables 윽 euk, 읃 eut, and 읏 eut did not occur in Hanja, Choe
gave those letters the modified names 기역 giyeok, 디귿 digeut, and 시
옷 siot, using Hanja that did not fit the pattern (for 기역) or native
Korean syllables (for 디귿 and 시옷).[61]

Originally, Choe gave ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅎ the irregular one-syllable

names of ji, chi, ḳi, ṭi, p̣ i, and hi, because they should not be used as
final consonants, as specified in Hunminjeongeum. However, after
establishment of the new orthography in 1933, which let all consonants
be used as finals, the names changed to the present forms.

In North Korea
The chart below shows names used in North Korea for consonants in
the Korean alphabet. The letters are arranged in North Korean
alphabetic order, and the letter names are romanised with the
:
 McCune–Reischauer system, which is widely used in North Korea. The
tense consonants are described with the word 된 toen meaning hard.

Consonant ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ

리 시 지 티 히
Name 기윽 니은 디읃 미음 비읍 치읓 키읔 피읖
을 읏 읒 읕 읗

McCR kiŭk niŭn diŭt riŭl miŭm piŭp siŭt jiŭt chiŭt ḳiŭk ṭiŭt p̣ iŭp hiŭt

In North Korea, an alternative way to refer to a consonant is letter + ŭ

(ㅡ), for example, gŭ (그) for the letter ㄱ, and ssŭ (쓰) for the letter ㅆ.

As in South Korea, the names of vowels in the Korean alphabet are the
same as the sound of each vowel.

In South Korea
The chart below shows names used in South Korea for consonants of
the Korean alphabet. The letters are arranged in the South Korean
alphabetic order, and the letter names are romanised in the Revised
Romanization system, which is the official romanization system of
South Korea. The tense consonants are described with the word 쌍
ssang meaning double.
:
 Consonant ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ

Name 니 리 비
기역 쌍기역 디귿 쌍디귿 미음 쌍비읍 시옷
(Hangul) 은 을 읍

si-ot
Name gi- ssang- ni- ssang- ri- mi- bi- ssang-
digeut (shi-
(romanised) yeok giyeok eun digeut eul eum eup bi-eup
ot)

Stroke order
Letters in the Korean alphabet have adopted certain rules of Chinese
calligraphy, although ㅇ and ㅎ use a circle, which is not used in printed
Chinese characters.[62][63]

ㄱ (giyeok 기역)
:
 ㄴ (nieun 니은)

ㄷ (digeut 디귿)

ㄹ (rieul 리을)
:
 ㅁ (mieum 미음)

ㅂ (bieup 비읍)

ㅅ (siot 시옷)
:
 ㅇ (ieung 이응)

ㅈ (jieut 지읒)

ㅊ (chieut 치읓)
:
 ㅋ (ḳieuk 키읔)

ㅌ (ṭieut 티읕)

ㅍ (p̣ ieup 피읖)

:
 ㅎ (hieuh 히읗)

ㅏ (a)

ㅐ (ae)
:
 ㅓ (eo)

ㅔ (e)

ㅗ (o)
:
 ㅜ (u)

ㅡ (eu)
For the iotized vowels, which are not shown, the short stroke is simply
doubled.

Letter design
Scripts typically transcribe languages at the level of morphemes
(logographic scripts like Hanja), of syllables (syllabaries like kana), of
segments (alphabetic scripts like the Latin script used to write English
:
 and many other languages), or, on occasion, of distinctive features. The
Korean alphabet incorporates aspects of the latter three, grouping
sounds into syllables, using distinct symbols for segments, and in some
cases using distinct strokes to indicate distinctive features such as
place of articulation (labial, coronal, velar, or glottal) and manner of
articulation (plosive, nasal, sibilant, aspiration) for consonants, and
iotization (a preceding i-sound), harmonic class and i-mutation for
vowels.

For instance, the consonant ㅌ ṭ [tʰ] is composed of three strokes, each

one meaningful: the top stroke indicates ㅌ is a plosive, like ㆆ ʔ, ㄱ g, ㄷ
d, ㅈ j, which have the same stroke (the last is an affricate, a plosive–
fricative sequence); the middle stroke indicates that ㅌ is aspirated, like
ㅎ h, ㅋ ḳ, ㅊ ch, which also have this stroke; and the bottom stroke
indicates that ㅌ is alveolar, like ㄴ n, ㄷ d, and ㄹ l. (It is said to
represent the shape of the tongue when pronouncing coronal
consonants, though this is not certain.) Two obsolete consonants, ㆁ
and ㅱ, have dual pronunciations, and appear to be composed of two
elements corresponding to these two pronunciations: [ŋ]~silence for ㆁ
and [m]~[w] for ㅱ.

With vowel letters, a short stroke connected to the main line of the
letter indicates that this is one of the vowels that can be iotized; this
stroke is then doubled when the vowel is iotized. The position of the
stroke indicates which harmonic class the vowel belongs to, light (top
or right) or dark (bottom or left). In the modern alphabet, an additional
vertical stroke indicates i mutation, deriving ㅐ [ɛ], ㅚ [ø], and ㅟ [y]
from ㅏ [a], ㅗ [o], and ㅜ [u]. However, this is not part of the intentional
design of the script, but rather a natural development from what were
originally diphthongs ending in the vowel ㅣ [i]. Indeed, in many Korean
dialects, including the standard dialect of Seoul, some of these may still
be diphthongs. For example, in the Seoul dialect, ㅚ may alternatively
be pronounced [we̞ ], and ㅟ [ɥi]. Note: ㅔ [e] as a morpheme is ㅓ
combined with ㅣ as a vertical stroke. As a phoneme, its sound is not by
:
 i mutation of ㅓ [ʌ].

Beside the letters, the Korean alphabet originally employed diacritic

marks to indicate pitch accent. A syllable with a high pitch (거성) was
marked with a dot ( ) to the left of it (when writing vertically); a syllable
with a rising pitch (상성) was marked with a double dot, like a colon ( ).
These are no longer used, as modern Seoul Korean has lost tonality.
Vowel length has also been neutralized in Modern Korean[64] and is no
longer written.

Consonant design
The consonant letters fall into five homorganic groups, each with a
basic shape, and one or more letters derived from this shape by means
of additional strokes. In the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye account, the
basic shapes iconically represent the articulations the tongue, palate,
teeth, and throat take when making these sounds.
:
 Simple Aspirated Tense

velar ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ

fricatives ㅅ ㅆ

palatal ㅈ ㅊ ㅉ

coronal ㄷ ㅌ ㄸ

bilabial ㅂ ㅍ ㅃ

Velar consonants (아음, 牙音

a'eum "molar sounds")
ㄱ g [k], ㅋ ḳ [kʰ]
Basic shape: ㄱ is a side
view of the back of the
tongue raised toward the
:
 velum (soft palate). (For
illustration, access the
external link below.) ㅋ is
derived from ㄱ with a stroke
for the burst of aspiration.
Sibilant consonants (fricative or
palatal) (치음, 齒音 chieum
"dental sounds"):
ㅅ s [s], ㅈ j [tɕ], ㅊ ch [tɕʰ]
Basic shape: ㅅ was
originally shaped like a
wedge ∧, without the serif
on top. It represents a side
view of the teeth. The line
:
 topping ㅈ represents firm
contact with the roof of the
mouth. The stroke topping
ㅊ represents an additional
burst of aspiration.
Coronal consonants (설음, 舌音
seoreum "lingual sounds"):
ㄴ n [n], ㄷ d [t], ㅌ ṭ [tʰ], ㄹ r
[ɾ, ɭ]
Basic shape: ㄴ is a side
view of the tip of the tongue
raised toward the alveolar
ridge (gum ridge). The
letters derived from ㄴ are
:
 pronounced with the same
basic articulation. The line
topping ㄷ represents firm
contact with the roof of the
mouth. The middle stroke of
ㅌ represents the burst of
aspiration. The top of ㄹ
represents a flap of the
tongue.
Bilabial consonants (순음, 唇音
suneum "labial sounds"):
ㅁ m [m], ㅂ b [p], ㅍ p̣ [pʰ]
Basic shape: ㅁ represents
the outline of the lips in
:
 contact with each other. The
top of ㅂ represents the
release burst of the b. The
top stroke of ㅍ is for the
burst of aspiration.
Dorsal consonants (후음, 喉音
hueum "throat sounds"):
ㅇ '/ng [ŋ], ㅎ h [h]
Basic shape: ㅇ is an outline
of the throat. Originally ㅇ
was two letters, a simple
circle for silence (null
consonant), and a circle
topped by a vertical line, ㆁ,
:
 for the nasal ng. A now
obsolete letter, ㆆ,
represented a glottal stop,
which is pronounced in the
throat and had closure
represented by the top line,
like ㄱㄷㅈ. Derived from ㆆ
is ㅎ, in which the extra
stroke represents a burst of
aspiration.

Vowel design
:
 A diagram showing the derivation of vowels in the Korean alphabet.

Vowel letters are based on three elements:

A horizontal line representing the

flat Earth, the essence of yin.
A point for the Sun in the
heavens, the essence of yang.
(This becomes a short stroke
when written with a brush.)
:
 A vertical line for the upright
Human, the neutral mediator
between the Heaven and Earth.
Short strokes (dots in the earliest documents) were added to these
three basic elements to derive the vowel letter:

Simple vowels

Horizontal letters: these are mid-

high back vowels.
bright ㅗ o
dark ㅜ u
dark ㅡ eu (ŭ)
Vertical letters: these were once
low vowels.
:
 bright ㅏ a
dark ㅓ eo (ŏ)
bright ㆍ
neutral ㅣ i

Compound vowels
The Korean alphabet does not have a letter for w sound. Since an o or u
before an a or eo became a [w] sound, and [w] occurred nowhere else,
[w] could always be analyzed as a phonemic o or u, and no letter for
[w] was needed. However, vowel harmony is observed: dark ㅜ u with
dark ㅓ eo for ㅝ wo; bright ㅗ o with bright ㅏ a for ㅘ wa:

ㅘ wa = ㅗ o + ㅏ a
ㅝ wo = ㅜ u + ㅓ eo
ㅙ wae = ㅗ o + ㅐ ae
ㅞ we = ㅜ u + ㅔ e
The compound vowels ending in ㅣ i were originally diphthongs.
However, several have since evolved into pure vowels:
:
 ㅐ ae = ㅏ a + ㅣ i (pronounced
[ɛ])
ㅔ e = ㅓ eo + ㅣ i (pronounced
[e])
ㅙ wae = ㅘ wa + ㅣ i
ㅚ oe = ㅗ o + ㅣ i (formerly
pronounced [ø], see Korean
phonology)
ㅞ we = ㅝ wo + ㅣ i
ㅟ wi = ㅜ u + ㅣ i (formerly
pronounced [y], see Korean
phonology)
ㅢ ui = ㅡ eu + ㅣ i
:
 Iotized vowels
There is no letter for y. Instead, this sound is indicated by doubling the
stroke attached to the baseline of the vowel letter. Of the seven basic
vowels, four could be preceded by a y sound, and these four were
written as a dot next to a line. (Through the influence of Chinese
calligraphy, the dots soon became connected to the line: ㅓㅏㅜㅗ.) A
preceding y sound, called iotization, was indicated by doubling this dot:
ㅕㅑㅠㅛ yeo, ya, yu, yo. The three vowels that could not be iotized were
written with a single stroke: ㅡㆍㅣ eu, (arae a), i.

Simple Iotized

ㅏ ㅑ

ㅓ ㅕ

ㅗ ㅛ

ㅜ ㅠ

ㅣ
:
 The simple iotized vowels are:

ㅑ ya from ㅏ a
ㅕ yeo from ㅓ eo
ㅛ yo from ㅗ o
ㅠ yu from ㅜ u
There are also two iotized diphthongs:

ㅒ yae from ㅐ ae
ㅖ ye from ㅔ e
The Korean language of the 15th century had vowel harmony to a
greater extent than it does today. Vowels in grammatical morphemes
changed according to their environment, falling into groups that
"harmonized" with each other. This affected the morphology of the
language, and Korean phonology described it in terms of yin and yang:
If a root word had yang ('bright') vowels, then most suffixes attached to
it also had to have yang vowels; conversely, if the root had yin ('dark')
vowels, the suffixes had to be yin as well. There was a third harmonic
group called mediating (neutral in Western terminology) that could
coexist with either yin or yang vowels.

The Korean neutral vowel was ㅣ i. The yin vowels were ㅡㅜㅓ eu, u, eo;
the dots are in the yin directions of down and left. The yang vowels
were ㆍㅗㅏ ǝ, o, a, with the dots in the yang directions of up and right.
:
 The Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye states that the shapes of the non-
dotted letters ㅡㆍㅣ were chosen to represent the concepts of yin,
yang, and mediation: Earth, Heaven, and Human. (The letter ㆍ ǝ is now
obsolete except in the Jeju language.)

The third parameter in designing the vowel letters was choosing ㅡ as

the graphic base of ㅜ and ㅗ, and ㅣ as the graphic base of ㅓ and ㅏ. A
full understanding of what these horizontal and vertical groups had in
common would require knowing the exact sound values these vowels
had in the 15th century.

The uncertainty is primarily with the three letters ㆍㅓㅏ. Some linguists
reconstruct these as *a, *ɤ, *e, respectively; others as *ǝ, *e, *a. A third
reconstruction is to make them all middle vowels as *ʌ, *ɤ, *a.[65] With
the third reconstruction, Middle Korean vowels actually line up in a
vowel harmony pattern, albeit with only one front vowel and four middle
vowels:

ㅣ *i ㅡ *ɯ ㅜ *u

ㅓ *ɤ

ㆍ *ʌ ㅗ *o

ㅏ *a

However, the horizontal letters ㅡㅜㅗ eu, u, o do all appear to have been
mid to high back vowels, [*ɯ, *u, *o], and thus to have formed a
coherent group phonetically in every reconstruction.

Traditional account
The traditionally accepted account[j][66] on the design of the letters is
that the vowels are derived from various combinations of the following
three components: ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ. Here, ㆍ symbolically stands for the (sun in)
:
 heaven, ㅡ stands for the (flat) earth, and ㅣ stands for an (upright)
human. The original sequence of the Korean vowels, as stated in
Hunminjeongeum, listed these three vowels first, followed by various
combinations. Thus, the original order of the vowels was: ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ ㅗ ㅏ
ㅜ ㅓ ㅛ ㅑ ㅠ ㅕ. Two positive vowels (ㅗ ㅏ) including one ㆍ are followed
by two negative vowels including one ㆍ, then by two positive vowels
each including two of ㆍ, and then by two negative vowels each
including two of ㆍ.

The same theory provides the most simple explanation of the shapes of
the consonants as an approximation of the shapes of the most
representative organ needed to form that sound. The original order of
the consonants in Hunminjeong'eum was: ㄱ ㅋ ㆁ ㄷ ㅌ ㄴ ㅂ ㅍ ㅁ ㅈ ㅊ
ㅅ ㆆ ㅎ ㅇ ㄹ ㅿ.

1. ㄱ representing the [k] sound

geometrically describes its
tongue back raised.
2. ㅋ representing the [kʰ] sound
is derived from ㄱ by adding
another stroke.
3. ㆁ representing the [ŋ] sound
:
 may have been derived from
ㅇ by addition of a stroke.
4. ㄷ representing the [t] sound
is derived from ㄴ by adding a
stroke.
5. ㅌ representing the [tʰ] sound
is derived from ㄷ by adding
another stroke.
6. ㄴ representing the [n] sound
geometrically describes a
tongue making contact with
an upper palate.
7. ㅂ representing the [p] sound
:
 is derived from ㅁ by adding a
stroke.
8. ㅍ representing the [pʰ] sound
is a variant of ㅂ by adding
another stroke.
9. ㅁ representing the [m] sound
geometrically describes a
closed mouth.
10. ㅈ representing the [t͡ ɕ] sound
is derived from ㅅ by adding a
stroke.
11. ㅊ representing the [t͡ ɕʰ]
sound is derived from ㅈ by
:
 adding another stroke.
12. ㅅ representing the [s] sound
geometrically describes the
sharp teeth.
13. ㆆ representing the [ʔ] sound
is derived from ㅇ by adding a
stroke.
14. ㅎ representing the [h] sound
is derived from ㆆ by adding
another stroke.
15. ㅇ representing the absence
of a consonant geometrically
describes the throat.
:
 16. ㄹ representing the [ɾ] and [ɭ]
sounds geometrically
describes the bending
tongue.
17. ㅿ representing a weak ㅅ
sound describes the sharp
teeth, but has a different
origin than ㅅ.
Ledyard's theory of consonant
design
:
 A close-up of the inscription on a
statue of King Sejong. It reads
Sejong Daewang 세종대왕 and
illustrates the forms of the letters
originally promulgated by Sejong.
Note the dots on the vowels, the
geometric symmetry of s and j in
the first two syllables, the
asymmetrical lip at the top-left of
the d in the third, and the
distinction between initial and
final ieung in the last.

(Top) 'Phags-pa letters [k, t, p, s,

l], and their supposed Korean
derivatives [k, t, p, t͡ɕ, l]. Note the
lip on both 'Phags-pa [t] and the
Korean alphabet ㄷ.
(Bottom) Derivation of 'Phags-pa
w, v, f from variants of the letter
[h] (left) plus a subscript [w], and
analogous composition of the
Korean alphabet w, v, f from
variants of the basic letter [p] plus
a circle.

Although the Hunminjeong'eum Haerye explains the design of the

:
 consonantal letters in terms of articulatory phonetics, as a purely
innovative creation, several theories suggest which external sources
may have inspired or influenced King Sejong's creation. Professor Gari
Ledyard of Columbia University studied possible connections between
Hangul and the Mongol 'Phags-pa script of the Yuan dynasty. He,
however, also believed that the role of 'Phags-pa script in the creation
of the Korean alphabet was quite limited, stating it should not be
assumed that Hangul was derived from 'Phags-pa script based on his
theory:

It should be clear to any reader that in the total picture, that

['Phags-pa script's] role was quite limited ... Nothing would
disturb me more, after this study is published, than to
discover in a work on the history of writing a statement like
the following: "According to recent investigations, the
Korean alphabet was derived from the Mongol's phags-pa
script."[67]

Ledyard posits that five of the Korean letters have shapes inspired by
'Phags-pa; a sixth basic letter, the null initial ㅇ, was invented by
Sejong. The rest of the letters were derived internally from these six,
essentially as described in the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye. However,
the five borrowed consonants were not the graphically simplest letters
considered basic by the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye, but instead the
consonants basic to Chinese phonology: ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ, and ㄹ.

The Hunmin Jeong-eum states that King Sejong adapted the 古篆

(gojeon, Gǔ Seal Script) in creating the Korean alphabet. The 古篆 has
never been identified. The primary meaning of 古 gǔ is old (Old Seal
Script), frustrating philologists because the Korean alphabet bears no
functional similarity to Chinese 篆字 zhuànzì seal scripts. However,
Ledyard believes 古 gǔ may be a pun on 蒙古 Měnggǔ "Mongol", and
:
 that 古篆 is an abbreviation of 蒙古篆字 "Mongol Seal Script", that is, the
formal variant of the 'Phags-pa alphabet written to look like the
Chinese seal script. There were 'Phags-pa manuscripts in the Korean
palace library, including some in the seal-script form, and several of
Sejong's ministers knew the script well. If this was the case, Sejong's
evasion on the Mongol connection can be understood in light of
Korea's relationship with Ming China after the fall of the Mongol Yuan
dynasty, and of the literati's contempt for the Mongols.

According to Ledyard, the five borrowed letters were graphically

simplified, which allowed for consonant clusters and left room to add a
stroke to derive the aspirate plosives, ㅋㅌㅍㅊ. But in contrast to the
traditional account, the non-plosives (ㆁ ㄴ ㅁ ㅅ) were derived by
removing the top of the basic letters. He points out that while it is easy
to derive ㅁ from ㅂ by removing the top, it is not clear how to derive ㅂ
from ㅁ in the traditional account, since the shape of ㅂ is not analogous
to those of the other plosives.

The explanation of the letter ng also differs from the traditional

account. Many Chinese words began with ng, but by King Sejong's day,
initial ng was either silent or pronounced [ŋ] in China, and was silent
when these words were borrowed into Korean. Also, the expected
shape of ng (the short vertical line left by removing the top stroke of ㄱ)
would have looked almost identical to the vowel ㅣ [i]. Sejong's solution
solved both problems: The vertical stroke left from ㄱ was added to the
null symbol ㅇ to create ㆁ (a circle with a vertical line on top), iconically
capturing both the pronunciation [ŋ] in the middle or end of a word,
and the usual silence at the beginning. (The graphic distinction
between null ㅇ and ng ㆁ was eventually lost.)

Another letter composed of two elements to represent two regional

pronunciations was ㅱ, which transcribed the Chinese initial 微. This
represented either m or w in various Chinese dialects, and was
composed of ㅁ [m] plus ㅇ (from 'Phags-pa [w]). In 'Phags-pa, a loop
:
 under a letter represented w after vowels, and Ledyard hypothesized
that this became the loop at the bottom of ㅱ. In 'Phags-pa the Chinese
initial 微 is also transcribed as a compound with w, but in its case the w
is placed under an h. Actually, the Chinese consonant series 微⾮敷 w,
v, f is transcribed in 'Phags-pa by the addition of a w under three
graphic variants of the letter for h, and the Korean alphabet parallels
this convention by adding the w loop to the labial series ㅁㅂㅍ m, b, p,
producing now-obsolete ㅱㅸㆄ w, v, f. (Phonetic values in Korean are
uncertain, as these consonants were only used to transcribe Chinese.)

As a final piece of evidence, Ledyard notes that most of the borrowed

Korean letters were simple geometric shapes, at least originally, but
that ㄷ d [t] always had a small lip protruding from the upper left corner,
ꡊ

just as the 'Phags-pa d [t] did. This lip can be traced back to the
Tibetan letter ད d.

There is also the argument that the original theory, which stated the
Hangul consonants to have been derived from the shape of the
speaker's lips and tongue during the pronunciation of the consonants
(initially, at least), slightly strains credulity.[68]

Hangul supremacy
Hangul supremacy or Hangul scientific supremacy is the claim that
the Hangul alphabet is the simplest and most logical writing system in
the world.[69]

Proponents of the claim believe Hangul is the most scientific writing

system because its characters are based on the shapes of the parts of
the human body used to enunciate. For example, the first alphabet, ㄱ,
:
 is shaped like the root of the tongue blocking the throat and makes a
sound between /k/ and /g/ in English. They also believe that Hangul was
designed to be simple to learn, containing only 28 characters in its
alphabet with simplistic rules.

Harvard professor Edwin

Reischauer, a Japanologist,
regarded Hangul as a highly
logical system of writing.

Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank of Harvard University wrote

that "Hangul is perhaps the most scientific system of writing in general
use in any country."[70]

Former professor of Leiden University Frits Vos stated that King Sejong
"invented the world's best alphabet," adding, "It is clear that the Korean
alphabet is not only simple and logical, but has, moreover, been
constructed in a purely scientific way."[71]

Obsolete letters
:
 Hankido
[H.N-GI-
DO], a
martial
art, using
the
obsolete
vowel
arae-a
(top)

Numerous obsolete Korean letters and sequences are no longer used in

Korean. Some of these letters were only used to represent the sounds
of Chinese rime tables. Some of the Korean sounds represented by
these obsolete letters still exist in dialects.

13 obsolete
consonants
Soft consonants
(IPA)

Jamo ㅱ ㅸ ㅿ ㆁ ㅇ
first:/
:
 IPA /ɾ/ ɱ/ /β/ /s/ /ɕ/ /z/ /ŋ/ /∅/

last:/w/

Identified ⼼ ⽇ initial
微(미) ⾮(비) 審(심) final
Chinese (심) ( position:
position:
Character /ɱ/ /f/ /ɕ/ >일) /z/
/s/ 業 /ŋ/ 欲 /∅/
(Hanzi)

mid mid
mid to dipping/
Toneme falling to mid to
falling mid
falling falling

Remark

Standard
Chinese
Pinyin:
⼦z identical
[tsɨ]; to the
English: initial
Equivalents
z in zoo position of
or zebra; ng in
strong z Cantonese
in
English
zip
:
 10 obsolete
double
consonants Hard consonants

(IPA)

Jamo ㅥ ㅹ
IPA /nː/ /v/ /sˁ/ /ɕˁ/ /j/ /ŋː/ /t͡s/

Middle bh, hngw/gh

hn/nn hl/ll sh zh hng dz, ds
Chinese bhh or gr

Identified
邪(사) 禪(선) 從(종)
Chinese
Character /z/ /ʑ/ /d͡ z/
(Hanzi)

unaspirated
fortis
Remark aspirated aspirated voiceless
dental
affricate

66 obsolete clusters of two

consonants: , /ng/ (like
English think), ㅦ /nd/ (as English
Monday), , ㅧ /ns/ (as English
:
 Pennsylvania), ㅨ, /tʰ/ (as ㅌ;
nt in the language Esperanto),
/dg/ (similar to ㄲ; equivalent to
the word 밖 in Korean), /dr/
(like English in drive), /ɭ/
(similar to French Belle), ㅪ, ㅬ /lz/
(similar to English tall zebra), ,
ㅭ /t͡ ɬ/ (tl or ll; as in Nahuatl), /
ṃ/ (mh or mg, mm in English
hammer, Middle Korean:
pronounced as 목 mog with the
ㄱ in the word almost silent), ,
ㅮ, ㅯ (similar to ㅂ in Korean 없
다), ㅰ, , , ㅲ, , ㅳ bd
:
 (assimilated later into ㄸ), ,ㅶ
bj (assimilated later into ㅉ),
/bj/ (similar to 비추 in Korean verb
비추다 bit-chu-da but without
the vowel), ㅷ, , /ph/ (pha
similar to Korean word 돌입하지
dol ip-haji), ㅺ sk (assimilated
later into ㄲ; English: pick), ㅻ sn
(assimilated later into nn in
English annal), ㅼ sd (initial
position; assimilated later into
ㄸ), , sm (assimilated later
into nm), ㅽ sb (initial position;
similar sound to ㅃ), ,ㅾ
:
 assimilated later into ㅉ), , ,
/θ/, /ɸ/, , , /ð/, ,
/v/, (assimilated later into ㅿ;
English z), , , , , , ,
, ㆂ, ㆃ, , , , , , , ,
,
17 obsolete clusters of three
consonants: , ㅩ /rgs/ (similar
to "rx" in English name Marx), ,
/lmg/ (similar to English
Pullman), , ㅫ, , , , , ㅴ,
ㅵ, , , , ,
:
 1
obsolete
vowel Extremely soft vowel

(IPA)

Jamo ㆍ
/ʌ/

IPA (also commonly found in the Jeju language: /ɒ/, closely

similar to vowel:ㅓeo)

Letter
아래아 (arae-a)
name

formerly the base vowel ㅡ eu in the early development of

hangeul when it was considered vowelless, later development
Remarks into different base vowels for clarification; acts also as a mark
that indicates the consonant is pronounced on its own, e.g. s-
va-ha → ㆍ 하

Toneme low

44 obsolete diphthongs and

vowel sequences: (/j/ or /jɯ/
or /jɤ/, yeu or ehyu); closest
similarity to ㅢ, when follow by ㄱ
on initial position, pronunciation
:
 does not produce any difference:
/gj/), (/jɒ/; closest
similarity to ㅛ,ㅑ, ㅠ, ㅕ, when
follow by ㄱ on initial position,
pronunciation does not produce
any difference: /gj/), ‥(/j/;
closest similarity to ㅢ, see
former example in (/j/),
(/au̯ /; Icelandic Á, aw/ow in
English allow), (/jau̯ /; yao or
iao; Chinese diphthong iao), ,
, , , /ōu/ (紬 ㅊ , ch-
ieou; like Chinese: chōu), , ,
:
 , , (/w/, wo or wh, hw),
/ow/ (English window), ㆇ, ㆈ, ,
, ㆉ (/jø/; yue), /wʌ/ or /oɐ/
(pronounced like u'a, in English
suave), , , , (wu in
English would), /juǝ/ or /yua/
(like Chinese: 元 yuán), /ū/
(like Chinese: 軍 jūn), , ㆊ /ué/
jujǝ (ɥe; like Chinese: 瘸 qué), ㆋ
jujǝj (ɥej; iyye), , ㆌ /jü/ or /juj/
(/jy/ or ɥi; yu.i; like German
Jürgen), , (the same as
in pronunciation, since there is
no distinction due to it extreme
:
 similarity in pronunciation),
ɰju (ehyu or eyyu; like English
news), , /ià/ (like Chinese:
墊 diàn), , , , (/ʔu/), ㆎ
(ʌj; oi or oy, similar to English
boy).
In the original Korean alphabet system, double letters were used to
represent Chinese voiced (濁音) consonants, which survive in the
Shanghainese slack consonants and were not used for Korean words. It
was only later that a similar convention was used to represent the
modern tense (faucalized) consonants of Korean.

The sibilant (dental) consonants were modified to represent the two

series of Chinese sibilants, alveolar and retroflex, a round vs. sharp
distinction (analogous to s vs sh) which was never made in Korean, and
was even being lost from southern Chinese. The alveolar letters had
longer left stems, while retroflexes had longer right stems:
:
 Tenuis Aspirate Voiced Sonorant
5 Place of Articulation (오음, 五⾳)
전청 차청 (次 전탁 차탁 (次
in Chinese Rime Table
(全淸) 淸) (全濁) 濁)

精(정) 淸(청) 從(종)

치두음 (⿒頭⾳) /t͡s/ /t͡sʰ/ /d͡ z/
"tooth-head"

⼼(심) 邪(사)
Sibilants /s/ /z/
치음 (⿒⾳)

照(조) 穿(천) 牀(상)

정치음 (正⿒⾳) /t͡ɕ/ /t͡ɕʰ/ /d͡ ʑ/
"true front-tooth"

審(심) 禪(선)
/ɕ/ /ʑ/

ㄴ
Coronals 설상음 (⾆上⾳)
知(지) 徹(철) / 澄(징) 娘(낭) /
설음 (⾆⾳) "tongue up"
/ʈ/ ʈʰ/ /ɖ/ ɳ/

Most common

ㆍ ǝ (in Modern Korean called

:
 arae-a 아래아 "lower a"):
Presumably pronounced [ʌ],
similar to modern ㅓ (eo). It is
written as a dot, positioned
beneath the consonant. The
arae-a is not entirely obsolete, as
it can be found in various brand
names, and in the Jeju language,
where it is pronounced [ɒ]. The ǝ
formed a medial of its own, or
was found in the diphthong ㆎ ǝy,
written with the dot under the
consonant and ㅣ (i) to its right,
in the same fashion as ㅚ or ㅢ.
:
 ㅿ z (bansiot 반시옷 "half s",
banchieum 반치음): An unusual
sound, perhaps IPA [ʝ̃] (a
nasalized palatal fricative).
Modern Korean words previously
spelled with ㅿ substitute ㅅ or
ㅇ.
ㆆ ʔ (yeorinhieut 여린히읗 "light
hieut" or doenieung 된이응
"strong ieung"): A glottal stop,
lighter than ㅎ and harsher than
ㅇ.
ㆁ ŋ (yedieung 옛이응) "old
ieung" : The original letter for [ŋ];
:
 now conflated with ㅇ ieung.
(With some computer fonts such
as Arial Unicode MS, yesieung is
shown as a flattened version of
ieung, but the correct form is
with a long peak, longer than
what one would see on a serif
version of ieung.)
ㅸ β (gabyeounbieup 가벼운비읍,
sungyeongeumbieup 순경음비
읍): IPA [f]. This letter appears to
be a digraph of bieup and ieung,
but it may be more complicated
than that—the circle appears to
:
 be only coincidentally similar to
ieung. There were three other,
less-common letters for sounds
in this section of the Chinese
rime tables, ㅱ w ([w] or [m]), ㆄ f,
and ㅹ ff [v̤ ]. It operates slightly
like a following h in the Latin
alphabet (one may think of these
letters as bh, mh, ph, and pph
respectively). Koreans do not
distinguish these sounds now, if
they ever did, conflating the
fricatives with the corresponding
plosives.
:
 New Korean
Orthography

The words 놉니다, 흘렀다, 깨달으니,

지어, 고와, 왕, 가져서 written in New
Orthography.

To make the Korean alphabet a better morphophonological fit to the

Korean language, North Korea introduced six new letters, which were
published in the New Orthography for the Korean Language and used
officially from 1948 to 1954.[72]

Two obsolete letters were restored: ⟨ㅿ⟩ (리읃), which was used to
indicate an alternation in pronunciation between initial /l/ and final /d/;
:
 and ⟨ㆆ⟩ (히으), which was only pronounced between vowels.

Two modifications of the letter ㄹ were introduced, one which is silent

finally, and one which doubled between vowels. A hybrid ㅂ-ㅜ letter
was introduced for words that alternated between those two sounds
(that is, a /b/, which became /w/ before a vowel).

Finally, a vowel ⟨1⟩ was introduced for variable iotation.

Unicode

Hangul jamo characters in

Unicode
:
 Hangul Compatibility Jamo block
in Unicode

Hangul Jamo ( U+1100 – U+11FF ) and Hangul Compatibility Jamo

( U+3130 – U+318F ) blocks were added to the Unicode Standard in
June 1993 with the release of version 1.1. A separate Hangul Syllables
block (not shown below due to its length) contains pre-composed
syllable block characters, which were first added at the same time,
although they were relocated to their present locations in July 1996
with the release of version 2.0.[73]

Hangul Jamo Extended-A ( U+A960 – U+A97F ) and Hangul Jamo

Extended-B ( U+D7B0 – U+D7FF ) blocks were added to the Unicode
Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2.

Hangul Jamo[1]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1100.pdf)
(PDF)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

U+110x

U+111x

U+112x

U+113x

U+114x

HC
U+115x
F

HJ
U+116x
F
:
 U+117x

U+118x

U+119x ㆍ
U+11Ax ‥
U+11Bx

U+11Cx

U+11Dx

U+11Ex

U+11Fx

Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2. : Hangul jamo with a green background are modern-usage characters which can
be converted into precomposed Hangul syllables under Unicode normalization form
NFC.
Hangul jamo with a white background are used for archaic Korean only, and there are
no corresponding precomposed Hangul syllables.
"Conjoining Jamo Behavior" (https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode13.0.0/ch03.p
df#G24646) (PDF). The Unicode Standard. March 2020.

Hangul Jamo Extended-A[1][2]

Official Unicode Consortium code chart (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UA960.pd
f) (PDF)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

U+A96x

U+A97x

Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points
:
 Hangul Jamo Extended-B[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UD7B0.pd
f) (PDF)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

U+D7Bx

U+D7Cx

U+D7Dx

U+D7Ex

U+D7Fx

Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Hangul Compatibility Jamo[1][2]

Official Unicode Consortium code chart (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3130.pd
f) (PDF)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

U+313x ㄱ ㄲ ㄳ ㄴ ㄵ ㄶ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ
U+314x ㅀ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅄ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㅏ
U+315x ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ
U+316x ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ HF ㅥ ㅦ ㅧ ㅨ ㅩ ㅪ ㅫ ㅬ ㅭ ㅮ ㅯ
U+317x ㅰ ㅱ ㅲ ㅳ ㅴ ㅵ ㅶ ㅷ ㅸ ㅹ ㅺ ㅻ ㅼ ㅽ ㅾ ㅿ
U+318x ㆀ ㆁ ㆂ ㆃ ㆄ ㆅ ㆆ ㆇ ㆈ ㆉ ㆊ ㆋ ㆌ ㆍ ㆎ
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points
:
 Enclosed Hangul characters in
Unicode

Parenthesised ( U+3200 – U+321E ) and circled ( U+3260 –

U+327E ) Hangul compatibility characters are in the Enclosed CJK
Letters and Months block:

Hangul subset of Enclosed CJK Letters and Months[1][2]

Official Unicode Consortium code chart (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3200.pd
f) (PDF)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

U+320x ㈀ ㈁ ㈂ ㈃ ㈄ ㈅ ㈆ ㈇ ㈈ ㈉ ㈊ ㈋ ㈌ ㈍ ㈎ ㈏
U+321x ㈐ ㈑ ㈒ ㈓ ㈔ ㈕ ㈖ ㈗ ㈘ ㈙ ㈚ ㈛ ㈜

... (U+3220–U+325F omitted)

U+326x ㉠ ㉡ ㉢ ㉣ ㉤ ㉥ ㉦ ㉧ ㉨ ㉩ ㉪ ㉫ ㉬ ㉭ ㉮ ㉯
U+327x ㉰ ㉱ ㉲ ㉳ ㉴ ㉵ ㉶ ㉷ ㉸ ㉹ ㉺ ㉻

... (U+3280–U+32FF omitted)

Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2.^ Grey area indicates non-assigned code point

Halfwidth Hangul jamo characters

in Unicode

Half-width Hangul compatibility characters ( U+FFA0 – U+FFDC ) are

in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block:
:
 Hangul subset of Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFF00.pd
f) (PDF)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F

... (U+FF00–U+FF9F omitted)

HW
U+FFAx
HF ﾡ ﾤ ﾧ
U+FFBx

U+FFCx

U+FFDx

... (U+FFE0–U+FFEF omitted)

Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

The Korean alphabet in other Unicode blocks:

Tone marks for Middle Korean[74]

[75][76] are in the CJK Symbols
and Punctuation block:
( U+302E ), ( U+302F )
11,172 precomposed syllables in
the Korean alphabet make up the
:
 Hangul Syllables block
( U+AC00 – U+D7A3 )

Morpho-syllabic blocks
Except for a few grammatical morphemes prior to the twentieth
century, no letter stands alone to represent elements of the Korean
language. Instead, letters are grouped into syllabic or morphemic
blocks of at least two and often three: a consonant or a doubled
consonant called the initial (초성, 初聲 choseong syllable onset), a vowel
or diphthong called the medial (중성, 中聲 jungseong syllable nucleus),
and, optionally, a consonant or consonant cluster at the end of the
syllable, called the final (종성, 終聲 jongseong syllable coda). When a
syllable has no actual initial consonant, the null initial ㅇ ieung is used
as a placeholder. (In the modern Korean alphabet, placeholders are not
used for the final position.) Thus, a block contains a minimum of two
letters, an initial and a medial. Although the Korean alphabet had
historically been organized into syllables, in the modern orthography it
is first organized into morphemes, and only secondarily into syllables
within those morphemes, with the exception that single-consonant
morphemes may not be written alone.

The sets of initial and final consonants are not the same. For instance,
ㅇ ng only occurs in final position, while the doubled letters that can
occur in final position are limited to ㅆ ss and ㄲ kk.

Not including obsolete letters, 11,172 blocks are possible in the Korean
alphabet.[77]
:
 Letter placement within a
block
The placement or stacking of letters in the block follows set patterns
based on the shape of the medial.

Consonant and vowel sequences such as ㅄ bs, ㅝ wo, or obsolete ㅵ

bsd, ㆋ üye are written left to right.

Vowels (medials) are written under the initial consonant, to the right, or
wrap around the initial from bottom to right, depending on their shape:
If the vowel has a horizontal axis like ㅡ eu, then it is written under the
initial; if it has a vertical axis like ㅣ i, then it is written to the right of the
initial; and if it combines both orientations, like ㅢ ui, then it wraps
around the initial from the bottom to the right:
:
 initial medial

initial
medial

initial med.
med. 1 2

A final consonant, if present, is always written at the bottom, under the

vowel. This is called 받침 batchim "supporting floor":
:
 initial medial
final

initial
medial
final

initial med.
med. 2
final

A complex final is written left to right:

:
 initial medial
final 1 final 2

initial
medial
final 1 final 2

initial med.
med. 2
fin. 1 fin. 2

Blocks are always written in phonetic order, initial-medial-final.

Therefore:
:
 Syllables with a horizontal medial
are written downward: 읍 eup;
Syllables with a vertical medial
and simple final are written
clockwise: 쌍 ssang;
Syllables with a wrapping medial
switch direction (down-right-
down): 된 doen;
Syllables with a complex final are
written left to right at the bottom:
밟 balp.

Block shape
Normally the resulting block is written within a square. Some recent
fonts (for example Eun,[78] HY깊은샘물M, UnJamo) move towards the
:
 European practice of letters whose relative size is fixed, and use
whitespace to fill letter positions not used in a particular block, and
away from the East Asian tradition of square block characters (方块字).
They break one or more of the traditional rules:

Do not stretch initial consonant

vertically, but leave white space
below if no lower vowel and/or
no final consonant.
Do not stretch right-hand vowel
vertically, but leave white space
below if no final consonant.
(Often the right-hand vowel
extends farther down than the
left-hand consonant, like a
descender in European
typography.)
:
 Do not stretch final consonant
horizontally, but leave white
space to its left.
Do not stretch or pad each block
to a fixed width, but allow kerning
(variable width) where syllable
blocks with no right-hand vowel
and no double final consonant
can be narrower than blocks that
do have a right-hand vowel or
double final consonant.
In Korean, typefaces that do not have a fixed block boundary size are
called 탈네모 글꼴 (tallemo geulkkol, "out of square typeface"). If
horizontal text in the typeface ends up looking top-aligned with a
ragged bottom edge, the typeface can be called 빨랫줄 글꼴 (ppallaetjul
geulkkol, "clothesline typeface").

These fonts have been used as design accents on signs or headings,

:
 rather than for typesetting large volumes of body text.

Linear Korean

Computer Modern Unicode Oesol (https://github.com/Tzetach

i/Computer-Modern-Unicode-Oesol) , a linear Hangul font
with both uppercase and lowercase characters, using the
Unicode Private Use Area. The text is a pangram that reads:
"웬 초콜릿? 제가 원했던 건 뻥튀기 쬐끔과 의류예요." "얘야, 왜 또 불평?"

There was a minor and unsuccessful movement in the early twentieth

century to abolish syllabic blocks and write the letters individually and
in a row, in the fashion of writing the Latin alphabets, instead of the
standard convention of 모아쓰기 (moa-sseugi 'assembled writing'). For
example, ㅎㅏㄴㄱㅡㄹ would be written for 한글 (Hangeul).[79] It is called
풀어쓰기 (pureo-sseugi 'unassembled writing').

Avant-garde typographer Ahn Sang-soo created a font for the Hangul

Dada exposition that disassembled the syllable blocks; but while it
strings out the letters horizontally, it retains the distinctive vertical
position each letter would normally have within a block, unlike the older
linear writing proposals.[80]

Orthography
:
 Until the 20th century, no official orthography of the Korean alphabet
had been established. Due to liaison, heavy consonant assimilation,
dialectal variants and other reasons, a Korean word can potentially be
spelled in multiple ways. Sejong seemed to prefer morphophonemic
spelling (representing the underlying root forms) rather than a
phonemic one (representing the actual sounds). However, early in its
history the Korean alphabet was dominated by phonemic spelling. Over
the centuries the orthography became partially morphophonemic, first
in nouns and later in verbs. The modern Korean alphabet is as
morphophonemic as is practical. The difference between phonetic
romanization, phonemic orthography and morphophonemic
orthography can be illustrated with the phrase motaneun sarami:

Phonetic transcription and

translation:
motaneun sarami
[mo.tʰa.nɯn.sa.ɾa.mi]
a person who cannot do it

Phonemic transcription:
모타는사라미
/mo.tʰa.nɯn.sa.la.mi/

Morphophonemic transcription:
못하는사람이
|mot-ha-nɯn-sa.lam-i|
:
 Morpheme-by-morpheme gloss:

못–하–는 사람=이
mot-ha-
saram=i
neun
cannot-do- person=
[attributive] [subject]

After the Gabo Reform in 1894, the Joseon Dynasty and later the
Korean Empire started to write all official documents in the Korean
alphabet. Under the government's management, proper usage of the
Korean alphabet and Hanja, including orthography, was discussed, until
the Korean Empire was annexed by Japan in 1910.

The Government-General of Korea popularised a writing style that

mixed Hanja and the Korean alphabet, and was used in the later Joseon
dynasty. The government revised the spelling rules in 1912, 1921 and
1930, to be relatively phonemic.

The Hangul Society, founded by Ju Si-gyeong, announced a proposal

for a new, strongly morphophonemic orthography in 1933, which
became the prototype of the contemporary orthographies in both
North and South Korea. After Korea was divided, the North and South
revised orthographies separately. The guiding text for orthography of
:
 the Korean alphabet is called Hangeul Matchumbeop, whose last South
Korean revision was published in 1988 by the Ministry of Education.

Mixed scripts
Since the Late Joseon dynasty period, various Hanja-Hangul mixed
systems were used. In these systems, Hanja were used for lexical roots,
and the Korean alphabet for grammatical words and inflections, much
as kanji and kana are used in Japanese. Hanja have been almost
entirely phased out of daily use in North Korea, and in South Korea they
are mostly restricted to parenthetical glosses for proper names and for
disambiguating homonyms.

Indo-Arabic numerals are mixed in with the Korean alphabet, e.g. 2007
년 3월 22일 (22 March 2007).

Readability
Because of syllable clustering, words are shorter on the page than their
linear counterparts would be, and the boundaries between syllables are
easily visible (which may aid reading, if segmenting words into syllables
is more natural for the reader than dividing them into phonemes).[81]
Because the component parts of the syllable are relatively simple
phonemic characters, the number of strokes per character on average
is lower than in Chinese characters. Unlike syllabaries, such as
Japanese kana, or Chinese logographs, none of which encode the
constituent phonemes within a syllable, the graphic complexity of
:
 Korean syllabic blocks varies in direct proportion with the phonemic
complexity of the syllable.[82] Like Japanese kana or Chinese
characters, and unlike linear alphabets such as those derived from
Latin, Korean orthography allows the reader to utilize both the
horizontal and vertical visual fields.[83] Since Korean syllables are
represented both as collections of phonemes and as unique-looking
graphs, they may allow for both visual and aural retrieval of words from
the lexicon. Similar syllabic blocks, when written in small size, can be
hard to distinguish from, and therefore sometimes confused with, each
other. Examples include 홋/훗/흣 (hot/hut/heut), 퀼/퀄 (kwil/kwol), 홍/흥
(hong/heung), and 핥/핣/핢 (halt/halp/halm).

Style
The Korean alphabet may be written either
vertically or horizontally. The traditional direction
is from top to bottom, right to left. Horizontal
writing is also used.[84]

In Hunmin Jeongeum, the Korean alphabet was

printed in sans-serif angular lines of even thickness. This style is found
in books published before about 1900, and can be found in stone
carvings (on statues, for example).[84]

Over the centuries, an ink-brush style of calligraphy developed,

employing the same style of lines and angles as traditional Korean
calligraphy. This brush style is called gungche (궁체, 宮體), which means
Palace Style because the style was mostly developed and used by the
maidservants (gungnyeo, 궁녀, 宮女) of the court in Joseon dynasty.

Modern styles that are more suited for printed media were developed in
:
 the 20th century. In 1993, new names for both Myeongjo (明朝) and
Gothic styles were introduced when Ministry of Culture initiated an
effort to standardize typographic terms, and the names Batang (바탕,
meaning background) and Dotum (돋움, meaning "stand out") replaced
Myeongjo and Gothic respectively. These names are also used in
Microsoft Windows.

A sans-serif style with lines of equal width is popular with pencil and
pen writing and is often the default typeface of Web browsers. A minor
advantage of this style is that it makes it easier to distinguish -eung
from -ung even in small or untidy print, as the jongseong ieung (ㅇ) of
such fonts usually lacks a serif that could be mistaken for the short
vertical line of the letter ㅜ (u).

See also

Language
portal

Cyrillization of Korean
(Kontsevich System)
Hangul consonant and vowel
tables
:
 Hangul orthography
Korean Braille
Korean language and
computers – methods to type the
language
Korean manual alphabet
Korean mixed script
Korean phonology
Korean spelling alphabet
Myongjo
Romanization of Korean
McCune–Reischauer
:
 Revised Romanization of
Korean
Yale romanization of Korean

Notes

a. From Korean 한글, Korean

pronunciation: [ha(ː)n.ɡɯɭ].
Hangul may also be written as
Hangeul following South Korea's
standard Romanization.
b. ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ
ㅎ
c. ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ
d. ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ
:
 e. ㄳ ㄵ ㄶ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅄ
f. ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅢ
g. ㆍ
h. ㅿ ㆁ ㆆ
i. or not written
j. The explanation of the origin of
the shapes of the letters is
provided within a section of
Hunminjeongeum itself, 훈민정음
해례본 제자해 (Hunminjeongeum
Haeryebon Jajahae or
Hunminjeongeum, Chapter:
Paraphrases and Examples,
Section: Making of Letters),
which states: 牙音ㄱ 象舌根閉喉之
:
 形. (아음(어금니 소리) ㄱ은 혀뿌리가
목구멍을 막는 모양을 본뜨고), 舌音
ㄴ 象舌附上腭之形 ( 설음(혓 소리)
ㄴ은 혀(끝)가 윗 잇몸에 붙는 모양을
본뜨고), 脣音ㅁ 象口形. ( 순음(입술
소리) ㅁ은 입모양을 본뜨고), 齒音ㅅ
象齒形. ( 치음(잇 소리) ㅅ은 이빨 모
양을 본뜨고) 象齒形. 喉音ㅇ. 象喉形
(목구멍 소리ㅇ은 목구멍의 꼴을 본뜬
것이다). ㅋ比ㄱ. 聲出稍 . 故加 . ㄴ而
ㄷ. ㄷ而ㅌ. ㅁ而ㅂ. ㅂ而ㅍ. ㅅ而ㅈ.
ㅈ而ㅊ. ㅇ而ㅡ. ㅡ而ㅎ. 其因聲加 之
義皆同. 而唯 爲異 (ㅋ은ㄱ에 견주어
소리 남이 조금 세므로 획을 더한 것이
고, ㄴ에서 ㄷ으로, ㄷ에서 ㅌ으로 함
:
 과, ㅁ에서 ㅂ으로 ㅂ에서 ㅍ으로 함
과, ㅅ에서 ㅈ으로 ㅈ에서 ㅊ으로 함
과, ㅇ에서 ㅡ으로 ㅡ에서 ㅎ으로 함
도, 그 소리를 따라 획을 더한 뜻이 같
다 . 오직 ㅇ자는 다르다.) 半舌音ㄹ.
半齒音. 亦象舌齒之形而異其體. (반혓
소리ㄹ과, 반잇소리 '세모자'는 또한
혀와 이의 꼴을 본뜨되, 그 본을 달리
하여 획을 더하는 뜻이 없다.) ...

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 External links

Look up Appendix:List of
modern Hangul syllabic blocks
by strokes in Wiktionary, the free
dictionary.

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