Как пишется буква а на корейском

Запишись на урок и обсуди эту тему с нами!

할 수 있다고 믿으면, 이미 반은 이룬 것이다
Стоит поверить в свои силы – и вот, вы уже на полпути к цели.
(корейская пословица)

Боитесь приниматься за изучение корейского? Или, наоборот, хотите поскорее начать, но не знаете, с какой стороны к нему подступиться?

Мы подскажем, как быстро выучить корейский язык (только имейте в виду – это не значит: «молниеносно» ;), поможем приблизиться к пониманию того, как правильно произносятся звуки, выучим необходимые корейские буквы и потренируемся в их начертании.

В этой статье разберёмся, как быстро выучить корейский алфавит самостоятельно.

Для начала взглянем на то, как он вообще выглядит.

Сама система называется хангыль (한글), что в переводе с древнего означает «великая письменность», а с современного – «корейская письменность».

Буквы корейского алфавита называются чамо (자모), то есть «мать», что показывает: это – основа языка.

Начнём с простых гласных букв:


Буква


Звук


Особенность произношения

1

«и»

Базовая гласная.

2

«ы»

Базовая гласная.

3

«а»

Звучит более открыто, чем русский звук «а».

4

«я»

5

«о»

Нечто среднее между русскими «о» и «э».

6

«ё»

Среднее между «ё» и «э».

7

«о»

Среднее между «у» и «о».

8

«ё»

Среднее между «ю» и «ё».

9

«у»

10

«ю»

Также, существуют ещё так называемые сложные гласные.

Не торопитесь пугаться – на письме они составлены из простых, с которыми мы уже познакомились. Вы легко запомните их тоже.


Буква


Звук


Особенность произношения

1

«э»

2

«е»

3

«йэ»

4

«йе»

5

«вэ»

6

«ви»

7

«ва»

8

«во»

9

«вэ»

10

«ве»

11

«ый»/ «и»

В начале слова читается «ый».

В конце слова – «и».

Переходим к согласным звукам и, точно так же, вначале знакомимся с простыми:


Буква


Звук


Особенность произношения

1

«киёк»

В начале/конце слова, на стыке двух согласных – читается, как «к».

После звонкого согласного, между двумя гласными – как «г».

2

«ниын»

Читается как «н».

3

«тигыт»

В начале/конце слова, на стыке двух согласных – читается, как «т».

После звонкого согласного, между двумя гласными – как «д».

4

«риыль»

В начале слова/между двумя согласными – читается как «р».

В конце слова, перед согласным – как «ль».

5

«миым»

Читается как «м».

6

«пиып»

В начале/конце слова, на стыке двух глухих согласных – читается, как «п».

После звонкого согласного, между двумя гласными – как «б».

7

«сиот»

Перед йотированными гласными («и», «ё», «ю», «я») читается «шепеляво» – нечто среднее между «сь» и «щ».

8

«иын»

Читается «в нос» (похоже на “ng” в английском).

В начале слога – не читается вообще.

9

«чиыт»

В начале/конце слова, на стыке двух глухих согласных – читается как «ч».

После звонкого согласного/между двумя гласными – мягко: «дж».

10

«хиыт»

Слабо: «х».

Оставшиеся («сложные») согласные составляют две группы: придыхательные и сдвоенные.

Есть четыре «придыхательных»…


Буква


Звук


Произношение

1

«кхиёк»

Читается: «к».

В транскрипции – «кх».

2

«тхиыт»

Читается: «т».

В транскрипции – «тх».

3

«пхиып»

Читается: «п».

В транскрипции – «пх».

4

«чхиыт»

Читается: «ч».

В транскрипции – «чх».

…и пять «глоттализованных» (сдвоенных) согласных.



Буква


Звук


Произношение

1

«ссанъ-киёк»

Произносится: «кк».

2

«ссанъ-тигыт»

Произносится: «тт».

3

«ссанъ-пиып»

Произносится: «пп».

4

«ссанъ-сиот»

Произносится: «сс».

5

«ссанъ-чиыт»

Произносится: «чч».

Сколько букв в корейском алфавите?

Всего можно насчитать 51 чамо. Из них именно буквами являются 24 чамо («простые» гласные + «простые» и «придыхательные» согласные). Остальные 27 составляют «сдвоенные» согласные + 11 диграфов и 11 дифтонгов.

Как всё это выучить и поскорее запомнить?

Как выучить корейский быстро

Для начала – сконцентрируйтесь на 24 чамо, которые составляют основную структуру алфавита.

Во-первых, постарайтесь воспользоваться знакомыми вам мнемотехниками, которые помогают лучше запоминать любую другую информацию. Вспомните, например, как в школе вам легче всего было учить стихи или запоминать математические формулы? Самое время обратиться к этим приёмам ещё раз.

Во-вторых, постройте ассоциативные ряды: мысленно свяжите изображение буквы с её отдельным звучанием. Затем, когда будете уверены в том, что связка прочно укрепилась в сознании, свяжите её с особыми правилами произношения в различных частях слова (если таковые есть).

В-третьих, не пытайтесь выучить всё сразу и не торопитесь – при таком подходе вы едва ли сэкономите больше времени. Оцените все имеющиеся у вас знаки (визуально или мысленно – как вам удобно) и постарайтесь разбить их на несколько блоков (например, на 6 – по 4 знака). Заучивайте буквы постепенно, группами.

Когда управитесь с основными чамо – переходите к изучению гласных, согласных и дифтонгов. Их можно группировать и запоминать по той же схеме.

Как писать корейские буквы?

Считается, что это чуть ли не единственный оригинальный алфавит на всей территории Дальнего востока. Он сильнее других напоминает нам системы знаков, к которым привыкли на Западе. Тем не менее, есть несколько моментов в корейской письменности, которые стоит учесть.

Во-первых, всё, что мы пишем, должно быть всегда направлено слева направо и сверху вниз. Ни в коем случае не наоборот!

Во-вторых, выберите удобные прописи, чтобы отточить написание иероглифов и «набить» руку. Важно регулярно тренироваться, прописывая минимум по паре строчек для каждой буквы. Помните, что записи от руки всегда запоминаются намного лучше – ещё один способ быстро и естественно запомнить все необходимые символы.

В-третьих, не забудьте отдельно потренировать такие прописи, как «кагяпхё». Они содержат особые связки гласных с согласными, которые будет полезно научиться бегло писать.

Правда, удивительный язык? И очень красивые иероглифы, которые интересно было бы уметь читать и красиво писать (пусть поначалу не так, как это делают профессиональные мастера каллиграфии).

Однако определённых успехов достичь определённо можно, отправившись на курсы корейского.

Если вдруг вам не с кем оставить ребёнка, пока вы сами будете постигать тайны языка, то почему бы не организовать обучение детей? Затем можно будет отправиться в путешествие по Корее всей семьёй! И чувствовать себя там свободно и расковано в общении с местными жителями :)

Корейский язык: Алфавит

Чтобы Вы долго не задерживались на алфавите, просто уделите ему один день максимум, и оставьте эту вкладку открытой (закрепите в браузере) и потом посматривайте и повторяйте. Таким образом, Вы выучите алфавит в ходе практики последующих уроков.

Внимание! Содержание всех уроков будет в разделе: Корейский язык: Введение

Гласные:

а
я
 — о (произносится, как между «о» и «а» — рот открыт как при произнесении звука «а»)
ㅕ ё (по аналогии с буквой «ㅓ» — рот открытый, как при произнесении звука «а»)
 — о (произносится, как между «о» и «у» — губы «трубочкой», как при произнесении звука «у»)
 — ё (йо, губы вытянуты, можно сказать губки «бантиком», более закрытая)
 — у
— ю
ы
и
э
е
э
е

ЗАДАНИЕ №1
Писать нужно слева направо, сверху вниз…
Напишите каждую букву по две строчки, порядка написания — потом сфотографируйте, и загрузите фото в комментариях к этой статье.Корейский язык: Алфавит

Практикуем:
오이 (ои) — огурец
아이 (аи) — ребёнок
우유 (ую) — молоко
여우 (ёу) — лиса

Дифтонги:
ва
вэ
вэ
во
увэ
ви
ый
*Хотя в корейском языке нет буквы «в», при произношении дифтонгов, звук
средний, между уэ, и вэ.

Практикуем:
(вэ) — почему?
(ви) — желудок

Согласные:

— киёк (г, к)
— ниын (н)
— тигыт (д, т)
— риыль (р, л, ль)
— миым (м)
— биып (б, п)
— щиот (с, щ)
— иынг (нг (ng)) – также, если слог начинается с гласной, обязательно
ставится иынг перед гласной
– джиыт (дж)
— чиыт (ч)
— кхиык (кх)
— тхиыт (тх)
— пхиып (пх)
— хиыт (х)
*ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ – являются придыхательными согласными, они производные от
ㅈ ㄱ ㄷ
*ㅇ ㅎ – гортанные согласные

ЗАДАНИЕ №2
Писать нужно слева направо, сверху вниз…
Напишите каждую букву по две строчки, порядка написания — потом сфотографируйте, и загрузите фото в комментариях к этой статье.Корейский язык: Алфавит

Сдвоенные согласные:

– ссанг киёк (к)
— ссанг тигыт (т)
— ссанг биып (пп)
– ссанг щиот (с)
– ссанг джиыт (ц)
*Кстати, «ссанг» 쌍 – означает «пара» или как мы говорим — сдвоенные

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Песня Ка-На-Да / Ganada song
Повторяйте за диктором

ПРАКТИКУЕМ ГЛАСНЫЕ

ПРАКТИКУЕМ ГЛАСНЫЕ

Korean alphabet

한글 / 조선글
韓㐎 / 朝鮮㐎
Hangul (Hangeul) / Chosŏn’gŭl

Hangul chosongul fontembed.svg

«Chosŏn’gŭl» (top) and «Hangul» (bottom)

Script type Featural

alphabet

Creator Sejong of Joseon

Time period

1443–present
Direction Hangul is usually written horizontally, from left to right and classically from right to left. It is also written vertically, from top to bottom and from right to left.
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 alias

Hangul

Unicode range

  • U+1100–U+11FF
  • U+3130–U+318F
  • U+A960–U+A97F
  • U+D7B0–U+D7FF
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul[a] ( HAHN-gool[1]) in South Korea and Chosŏn’gŭl 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, although it is not necessarily an abugida.[6][8]

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 its 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] As a result, Hangul was initially denounced and disparaged by the Korean educated class. The script became known as eonmun («vernacular writing», 언문, 諺文) and became the primary Korean script only in the decades after Korea’s independence from Japan in the mid-20th century.[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 ㄲㅜㄹㅂㅓㄹ.[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 in the Cia-Cia language.

Names[edit]

Official names[edit]

Korean name (North Korea)
Chosŏn’gŭl

조선글

Hancha

朝鮮

Revised Romanization Joseon(-)geul
McCune–Reischauer Chosŏn’gŭl
IPA Korean pronunciation: [tso.sɔn.ɡɯl]
Korean name (South Korea)
Hangul

한글

Hanja

Revised Romanization Han(-)geul
McCune–Reischauer Han’gŭl[13]
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 (훈민정음) 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 (), meaning great, and geul (), 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[edit]

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[edit]

Creation[edit]

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. 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.»[24]

A page from the Hunminjeong’eum Eonhae. The Hangul-only column, third from the left (나랏말ᄊᆞ미), 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.[citation needed]

Opposition[edit]

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.[25]

King Yeonsangun banned the study and publication of the Korean alphabet in 1504, after a document criticizing the king was published.[26] Similarly, King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun, a governmental institution related to Hangul research, in 1506.[27]

Revival[edit]

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.[28] However, the use of the Korean alphabet had gone without orthographical standardization for so long that spelling had become quite irregular.[25]

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.[29] This book, which was published in 1785, described the Joseon Kingdom[30] and the Korean alphabet.[31] In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh’s French translation.[32]

Thanks to growing Korean nationalism, the Gabo Reformists’ push, and Western missionaries’ promotion of the Korean alphabet in schools and literature,[33] the Hangul Korean alphabet was adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894.[26] 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.[34]

Reforms and suppression under Japanese rule[edit]

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.[35]

The orthography of the Korean alphabet was partially standardized in 1912, when the vowel arae-a ()—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.[25]

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 was written alone (without a vowel) when it occurred between nouns, and the nominative particle was introduced after vowels, replacing .[25]

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.[25] 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.[36][37]

Further reforms[edit]

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.[25]

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[edit]

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 the 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.[38]

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.[38]

In North Korea[edit]

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.[39]

Non-Korean languages[edit]

Systems that employed Hangul letters with modified rules were attempted by linguists such as Hsu Tsao-te [zh] 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).[40][41][42]

The Hunminjeong’eum Society in Seoul attempted to spread the use of Hangul to unwritten languages of Asia.[43] In 2009, it was unofficially adopted by the town of Baubau, in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, to write the Cia-Cia language.[44][45][46][47]

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.[48] However, it was confirmed in October 2012 that the attempts to disseminate the use of the Korean alphabet in Indonesia ultimately failed.[49]

Letters[edit]

Korean alphabet letters and pronunciation

Letters in the Korean alphabet are called jamo (자모). There are 19 consonants (자음) and 21 vowels (모음) used in the modern alphabet. They were first named in Hunmongjahoe, a hanja textbook written by Choe Sejin.

Consonants[edit]

The shape of tongue when pronouncing ㄱ

The shape of tongue when pronouncing ㄱ (g)

The shape of tongue when pronouncing ㄴ

The shape of tongue when pronouncing ㄴ (n)

The shape of teeth and tongue when pronouncing ㅅ

The shape of teeth and tongue when pronouncing ㅅ (s)

ㅇ is the mimic of the throat hole.

ㅇ (ng) is similar to the throat hole.

ㅁ is the mimic of mouth closed.

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
Initial Romanization g kk n d tt r m b pp s ss [i] j jj ch k t p h
IPA /k/ /k͈/ /n/ /t/ /t͈/ /ɾ/ /m/ /p/ /p͈/ /s/ /s͈/ silent /t͡ɕ/ /t͈͡ɕ͈/ /t͡ɕʰ/ /kʰ/ /tʰ/ /pʰ/ /h/
Final Romanization k k n t l m p t t ng t t k t p t
g kk n d l m b s ss ng j ch k t p h
IPA /k̚/ /n/ /t̚/ /ɭ/ /m/ /p̚/ /t̚/ /ŋ/ /t̚/ /t̚/ /k̚/ /t̚/ /p̚/ /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).[50] The chart below lists the Korean consonants by their respective categories and subcategories.

Consonants in Standard Korean (orthography)[51]

Bilabial Alveolar Alveolo-palatal Velar Glottal
Obstruent Stop (plosive) Lax p (ㅂ) t (ㄷ) k (ㄱ)
Tense (ㅃ) (ㄸ) (ㄲ)
Aspirated (ㅍ) (ㅌ) (ㅋ)
Fricative Lax s (ㅅ) h (ㅎ)
Tense (ㅆ)
Affricate Lax t͡ɕ (ㅈ)
Tense t͈͡ɕ͈ (ㅉ)
Aspirated t͡ɕʰ (ㅊ)
Sonorant Nasal m (ㅁ) n (ㄴ) ŋ (ㅇ)
Liquid (lateral approximant) l (ㄹ)

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.[50]

Korean sonorants are voiced.

Consonant assimilation[edit]

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 block’s initial letter-sound[clarification needed]
(e.g. 강루 – kang+ru = kang+nu[clarification needed], 있어 – it+eo = iss+eo, 합니다 – hap+ni+da = ham-ni-da)

Preceding syllable block’s final letter-sound

(k)

(k)

(n)

(t)

(l)

(m)

(p)

(t)

(t)

(ng)

(t)

(t)

(k)

(t)

(p)

(t)

Subsequent syllable block’s initial letter ㄱ(g) k+k n+g t+g l+g m+g b+g t+g t+g t+g t+g p+g h+k
ㄴ(n) ng+n n+n l+n m+n m+n t+n n+t t+n t+n t+n p+n h+n
ㄷ(d) k+d n+d t+t l+d m+d p+d t+t t+t t+t t+t k+d t+t p+d h+t
ㄹ(r) g+n n+n l+l m+n m+n ng+n r
ㅁ(m) g+m n+m t+m l+m m+m m+m t+m ng+m t+m t+m k+d t+m p+m h+m
ㅂ(b) g+b p+p t+b
ㅅ (s) ss+s
ㅇ(∅) g kk+h n t r m p s ss ng+h t+ch t+ch k+h t+ch p+h h
ㅈ(j) t+ch
ㅎ(h) k kk+h n+h t r/

l+h

m+h p t t+ch t+ch k t p

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 chords that are not tensed, they are more likely to be affected by surrounding voiced sounds (which are produced by vocal chords that are vibrating).[50]

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.[50]

  • 밥 [pap̚] – ‘rice’
  • 보리밥 [poɾibap̚] – ‘barley mixed with rice’

  • 다 [ta] – ‘all’
  • 맏 [mat̚] – ‘oldest’
  • 맏아들 [madadɯɭ] – ‘oldest son’

  • 죽 [t͡ɕuk] – ‘porridge’
  • 콩죽 [kʰoŋd͡ʑuk̚] – ‘bean porridge’

  • 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.[50]

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 [ip̚k͈u].

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 dag; [preceding another syllable block] 없다 – eop-ta, 앉아 an-ja)

Preceding syllable block’s final letter*

(gs)

(nj)

(nh)

(lg)

(lm)

(lb)

(ls)

(lṭ)

(lp̣)

(lh)

(ps)

(pronunciation in isolation) g nj nh g m b s h p
Subsequent block’s initial letter** ㅇ(∅) g+s n+j l+h l+g l+m l+b l+s l+ṭ l+p̣ l+h p+s
ㄷ(d) g+t nj+d/

nt+ch

n+t g+d m+d b+d l+t l+ṭ p̣+d l+t p+t

In cases where consonant clusters are followed by words beginning with ㅇ or ㄷ, 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, 삶이 is pronounced as [sal.mi].

Vowels[edit]

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
Revised Romanization a ae ya yae eo e yeo ye o wa wae oe yo u wo we wi yu eu ui/

yi

i
IPA /a/ /ɛ/ /ja/ /jɛ/ /ʌ/ /e/ /jʌ/ /je/ /o/ /wa/ /wɛ/ /ø/ ~ [we] /jo/ /u/ /wʌ/ /we/ /y/ ~ [ɥi] /ju/ /ɯ/ /ɰi/ /i/

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.[who?] 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).[51] 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.[52]

Alphabetic order[edit]

Alphabetic order in the Korean alphabet is called the ganada order, (가나다순) 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.[53]

Historical orders[edit]

The order from the Hunminjeongeum in 1446 was:[54]

ㄱ ㄲ ㅋ ㆁ ㄷ ㄸ ㅌ ㄴ ㅂ ㅃ ㅍ ㅁ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅅ ㅆ ㆆ ㅎ ㆅ ㅇ ㄹ ㅿ
ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ ㅗ ㅏ ㅜ ㅓ ㅛ ㅑ ㅠ ㅕ

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 (null) and (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.[55][56]

North Korean order[edit]

The new, double, letters are placed at the end of the consonants, just before the null , so as not to alter the traditional order of the rest of the alphabet.

ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ
ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅚ ㅟ ㅢ ㅘ ㅝ ㅙ ㅞ

All digraphs and trigraphs, including the old diphthongs and , 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 ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅁ ㅂ ㅄ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㅆ

(None means there is no final letter.)

Unlike when it is initial, this is pronounced, as the nasal 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.[55]

South Korean order[edit]

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

ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ

ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ

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 or 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 ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅁ ㅂ ㅄ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ

Every syllable begins with a consonant (or the silent ㅇ) that is followed by a vowel (e.g. + = ). Some syllables such as and have a final consonant or final consonant cluster (받침). Then, 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.[55]

The sort order including archaic Hangul letters defined in the South Korean national standard KS X 1026-1 is:[57]

  • Initial consonants: ᄀ, ᄁ, ᅚ, ᄂ, ᄓ, ᄔ, ᄕ, ᄖ, ᅛ, ᅜ, ᅝ, ᄃ, ᄗ, ᄄ, ᅞ, ꥠ, ꥡ, ꥢ, ꥣ, ᄅ, ꥤ, ꥥ, ᄘ, ꥦ, ꥧ, ᄙ, ꥨ, ꥩ, ꥪ, ꥫ, ꥬ, ꥭ, ꥮ, ᄚ, ᄛ, ᄆ, ꥯ, ꥰ, ᄜ, ꥱ, ᄝ, ᄇ, ᄞ, ᄟ, ᄠ, ᄈ, ᄡ, ᄢ, ᄣ, ᄤ, ᄥ, ᄦ, ꥲ, ᄧ, ᄨ, ꥳ, ᄩ, ᄪ, ꥴ, ᄫ, ᄬ, ᄉ, ᄭ, ᄮ, ᄯ, ᄰ, ᄱ, ᄲ, ᄳ, ᄊ, ꥵ, ᄴ, ᄵ, ᄶ, ᄷ, ᄸ, ᄹ, ᄺ, ᄻ, ᄼ, ᄽ, ᄾ, ᄿ, ᅀ, ᄋ, ᅁ, ᅂ, ꥶ, ᅃ, ᅄ, ᅅ, ᅆ, ᅇ, ᅈ, ᅉ, ᅊ, ᅋ, ꥷ, ᅌ, ᄌ, ᅍ, ᄍ, ꥸ, ᅎ, ᅏ, ᅐ, ᅑ, ᄎ, ᅒ, ᅓ, ᅔ, ᅕ, ᄏ, ᄐ, ꥹ, ᄑ, ᅖ, ꥺ, ᅗ, ᄒ, ꥻ, ᅘ, ᅙ, ꥼ, (filler; U+115F)
  • Medial vowels: (filler; U+1160), ᅡ, ᅶ, ᅷ, ᆣ, ᅢ, ᅣ, ᅸ, ᅹ, ᆤ, ᅤ, ᅥ, ᅺ, ᅻ, ᅼ, ᅦ, ᅧ, ᆥ, ᅽ, ᅾ, ᅨ, ᅩ, ᅪ, ᅫ, ᆦ, ᆧ, ᅿ, ᆀ, ힰ, ᆁ, ᆂ, ힱ, ᆃ, ᅬ, ᅭ, ힲ, ힳ, ᆄ, ᆅ, ힴ, ᆆ, ᆇ, ᆈ, ᅮ, ᆉ, ᆊ, ᅯ, ᆋ, ᅰ, ힵ, ᆌ, ᆍ, ᅱ, ힶ, ᅲ, ᆎ, ힷ, ᆏ, ᆐ, ᆑ, ᆒ, ힸ, ᆓ, ᆔ, ᅳ, ힹ, ힺ, ힻ, ힼ, ᆕ, ᆖ, ᅴ, ᆗ, ᅵ, ᆘ, ᆙ, ힽ, ힾ, ힿ, ퟀ, ᆚ, ퟁ, ퟂ, ᆛ, ퟃ, ᆜ, ퟄ, ᆝ, ᆞ, ퟅ, ᆟ, ퟆ, ᆠ, ᆡ, ᆢ
  • Final consonants: (none), ᆨ, ᆩ, ᇺ, ᇃ, ᇻ, ᆪ, ᇄ, ᇼ, ᇽ, ᇾ, ᆫ, ᇅ, ᇿ, ᇆ, ퟋ, ᇇ, ᇈ, ᆬ, ퟌ, ᇉ, ᆭ, ᆮ, ᇊ, ퟍ, ퟎ, ᇋ, ퟏ, ퟐ, ퟑ, ퟒ, ퟓ, ퟔ, ᆯ, ᆰ, ퟕ, ᇌ, ퟖ, ᇍ, ᇎ, ᇏ, ᇐ, ퟗ, ᆱ, ᇑ, ᇒ, ퟘ, ᆲ, ퟙ, ᇓ, ퟚ, ᇔ, ᇕ, ᆳ, ᇖ, ᇗ, ퟛ, ᇘ, ᆴ, ᆵ, ᆶ, ᇙ, ퟜ, ퟝ, ᆷ, ᇚ, ퟞ, ퟟ, ᇛ, ퟠ, ᇜ, ퟡ, ᇝ, ᇞ, ᇟ, ퟢ, ᇠ, ᇡ, ᇢ, ᆸ, ퟣ, ᇣ, ퟤ, ퟥ, ퟦ, ᆹ, ퟧ, ퟨ, ퟩ, ᇤ, ᇥ, ᇦ, ᆺ, ᇧ, ᇨ, ᇩ, ퟪ, ᇪ, ퟫ, ᆻ, ퟬ, ퟭ, ퟮ, ퟯ, ퟰ, ퟱ, ퟲ, ᇫ, ퟳ, ퟴ, ᆼ, ᇰ, ᇬ, ᇭ, ퟵ, ᇱ, ᇲ, ᇮ, ᇯ, ퟶ, ᆽ, ퟷ, ퟸ, ퟹ, ᆾ, ᆿ, ᇀ, ᇁ, ᇳ, ퟺ, ퟻ, ᇴ, ᇂ, ᇵ, ᇶ, ᇷ, ᇸ, ᇹ
  • Sort order of Hangul consonants defined in the South Korean national standard KS X 1026-1

    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

    Sort order of Hangul vowels defined in the South Korean national standard KS X 1026-1

Letter names[edit]

names of the Korean consonant letters (South Korean)


names of the Korean vowel letters

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 euk, eut, and eut did not occur in Hanja, Choe gave those letters the modified names 기역 giyeok, 디귿 digeut, and 시옷 siot, using Hanja that did not fit the pattern (for 기역) or native Korean syllables (for 디귿 and 시옷).[58]

Originally, Choe gave , , , , , and the irregular one-syllable names of ji, chi, ḳi, ṭi, p̣i, 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[edit]

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 toen meaning hard.

Consonant
Name 기윽 니은 디읃 리을 미음 비읍 시읏 지읒 치읓 키읔 티읕 피읖 히읗 된기윽 된디읃 된비읍 된시읏 이응 된지읒
McCR kiŭk niŭn diŭt riŭl miŭm piŭp siŭt jiŭt chiŭt ḳiŭk ṭiŭt p̣iŭp hiŭt toen’giŭk toendiŭt toenbiŭp toensiŭt ‘iŭng toenjiŭt

In North Korea, an alternative way to refer to a consonant is letter + ŭ (), for example, gŭ () for the letter , and ssŭ () for the letter .

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

In South Korea[edit]

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 ssang meaning double.

Consonant
Name (Hangul) 기역 쌍기역 니은 디귿 쌍디귿 리을 미음 비읍 쌍비읍 시옷 쌍시옷 이응 지읒 쌍지읒 치읓 키읔 티읕 피읖 히읗
Name (romanised) gi-yeok ssang-giyeok ni-eun digeut ssang-digeut ri-eul mi-eum bi-eup ssang-bi-eup si-ot (shi-ot) ssang-si-ot (ssang-shi-ot) ‘i-eung ji-eut ssang-ji-eut chi-eut ḳi-euk ṭi-eut p̣i-eup hi-eut

Stroke order[edit]

Letters in the Korean alphabet have adopted certain rules of Chinese calligraphy, although and use a circle, which is not used in printed Chinese characters.[59][60]

  • ㄱ (giyeok 기역)

    (giyeok 기역)

  • ㄴ (nieun 니은)

    (nieun 니은)

  • ㄷ (digeut 디귿)

    (digeut 디귿)

  • ㄹ (rieul 리을)

    (rieul 리을)

  • ㅁ (mieum 미음)

    (mieum 미음)

  • ㅂ (bieup 비읍)

    (bieup 비읍)

  • ㅅ (siot 시옷)

    (siot 시옷)

  • ㅇ (ieung 이응)

    (ieung 이응)

  • ㅈ (jieut 지읒)

    (jieut 지읒)

  • ㅊ (chieut 치읓)

    (chieut 치읓)

  • ㅋ (ḳieuk 키읔)

    (ḳieuk 키읔)

  • ㅌ (ṭieut 티읕)

    (ṭieut 티읕)

  • ㅍ (p̣ieup 피읖)

    (p̣ieup 피읖)

  • ㅎ (hieuh 히읗)

    (hieuh 히읗)

  • ㅏ (a)

    (a)

  • ㅐ (ae)

    (ae)

  • ㅓ (eo)

    (eo)

  • ㅔ (e)

    (e)

  • ㅗ (o)

    (o)

  • ㅜ (u)

    (u)

  • ㅡ (eu)

    (eu)

For the iotized vowels, which are not shown, the short stroke is simply doubled.

Letter design[edit]

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

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 [ɛ], [ø], and [y] from [a], [o], and [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 [i]. Indeed, in many Korean dialects,[citation needed] including the standard dialect of Seoul, some of these may still be diphthongs. For example, in the Seoul dialect, may alternatively be pronounced [we̞], and [ɥi]. Note: [e] as a morpheme is ㅓ combined with ㅣ as a vertical stroke. As a phoneme, its sound is not by i mutation of [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[61] and is no longer written.

Consonant design[edit]

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

Vowel design[edit]

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[edit]

  • Horizontal letters: these are mid-high back vowels.
    • bright o
    • dark u
    • dark eu (ŭ)
  • Vertical letters: these were once low vowels.
    • bright a
    • dark eo (ŏ)
    • bright
    • neutral i

Compound vowels[edit]

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  u with dark  eo for wo; bright  o with bright  a for wa:

  •  wa =  o +  a
  •  wo =  u +  eo
  •  wae =  o +  ae
  •  we =  u +  e

The compound vowels ending in i were originally diphthongs. However, several have since evolved into pure vowels:

  •  ae =  a +  i (pronounced [ɛ])
  •  e =  eo +  i (pronounced [e])
  •  wae =  wa +  i
  •  oe =  o +  i (formerly pronounced [ø], see Korean phonology)
  •  we =  wo +  i
  •  wi =  u +  i (formerly pronounced [y], see Korean phonology)
  •  ui =  eu +  i

Iotized vowels[edit]

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

The simple iotized vowels are:

  •  ya from  a
  •  yeo from  eo
  •  yo from  o
  •  yu from  u

There are also two iotized diphthongs:

  •  yae from  ae
  •  ye from  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 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 ə, 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 ə is now obsolete except in the Jeju language.)

The third parameter in designing the vowel letters was choosing as the graphic base of and , and as the graphic base of and . 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 *ə, *e, *a. A third reconstruction is to make them all middle vowels as *ʌ, *ɤ, *a.[62] 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:

  *i     *u
 
    *o
  *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[edit]

The traditionally accepted account[j][63][unreliable source?] on the design of the letters is that the vowels are derived from various combinations of the following three components: ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ. Here, symbolically stands for the (sun in) heaven, stands for the (flat) earth, and 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. Note that two positive vowels (ㅗ ㅏ) including one are followed by two negative vowels including one , then by two positive vowels each including two of , and then by two negative vowels each including two of .

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. representing the [k] sound geometrically describes its tongue back raised.
  2. representing the [kʰ] sound is derived from by adding another stroke.
  3. representing the [ŋ] sound may have been derived from by addition of a stroke.
  4. representing the [t] sound is derived from by adding a stroke.
  5. representing the [tʰ] sound is derived from by adding another stroke.
  6. representing the [n] sound geometrically describes a tongue making contact with an upper palate.
  7. representing the [p] sound is derived from by adding a stroke.
  8. representing the [pʰ] sound is a variant of by adding another stroke.
  9. representing the [m] sound geometrically describes a closed mouth.
  10. representing the [t͡ɕ] sound is derived from by adding a stroke.
  11. representing the [t͡ɕʰ] sound is derived from by adding another stroke.
  12. representing the [s] sound geometrically describes the sharp teeth.[citation needed]
  13. representing the [ʔ] sound is derived from by adding a stroke.
  14. representing the [h] sound is derived from by adding another stroke.
  15. representing the absence of a consonant geometrically describes the throat.
  16. representing the [ɾ] and [ɭ] sounds geometrically describes the bending tongue.
  17. representing a weak sound describes the sharp teeth, but has a different origin than .[clarification needed]

Ledyard’s theory of consonant design[edit]

A close-up of the inscription on the statue of King Sejong above. 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 .
(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[64]

Ledyard posits that five of the Korean letters have shapes inspired by ‘Phags-pa; a sixth basic letter, the null initial , 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: , , , , and .[citation needed]

The Hunmin Jeong-eum states that King Sejong adapted the 古篆 (gojeon, Seal Script) in creating the Korean alphabet. The 古篆 has never been identified. The primary meaning of 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 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.[citation needed]

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 from by removing the top, it is not clear how to derive from in the traditional account, since the shape of is not analogous to those of the other plosives.[citation needed]

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 ) would have looked almost identical to the vowel [i]. Sejong’s solution solved both problems: The vertical stroke left from was added to the null symbol to create (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 and ng was eventually lost.)

Another letter composed of two elements to represent two regional pronunciations was , which transcribed the Chinese initial . This represented either m or w in various Chinese dialects, and was composed of [m] plus (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 . In ‘Phags-pa the Chinese initial 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 d [t] always had a small lip protruding from the upper left corner, just as the ‘Phags-pa d [t] did. This lip can be traced back to the Tibetan letter d.[citation needed]

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.[65]

Hangul supremacy theory[edit]

Hangul supremacy or Hangul scientific supremacy is the claim that the Hangul alphabet is the simplest and most logical writing system in the world.[66]

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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]

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.»[67]

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.»[68]

Obsolete letters[edit]

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

(IPA)

Soft consonants
/l/, /ɾ/, /rʷ/ /ɱ/, /mʷ/ /β/, /bʷ/ /θ/ /ɕ/ South Korean: /z/

North Korean: /ɭ/

initial position: /j/

final position: /ŋ/

initial position only: /∅/ /t͡s/ /t͡ɕ/ /t͡sʰ/ /t͡ɕʰ/ /ɸ/, /fʰ/, /pʷ/ /ʔ/, /j/
Middle Chinese lh hm v th x, sch, sz South Korean: z/z’/zz

North Korean: rr/rd/tt

initial position: ye/’eu

final position: ng

initial position only: ō/ou z j c q fh/ ff South Korean: ‘/à

North Korean: heu/h’/eu

Identified Chinese Character (Hanzi) 微(미)

/ɱ/

非(비)

/f/

心(심)

/s/

審(심)

/ɕ/

South Korean: 子 /z/

North Korean: 穰 /ɭ/

final position: 業 /ŋ/ initial position:

欲 /∅/

精(정)

/t͡s/

照(조)

/t͡ɕ/

淸(청)

/t͡sʰ/

穿(천)

/t͡ɕʰ/

敷(부)

/fʰ/

挹(읍)

/ʔ/

Toneme falling mid to falling mid to falling mid mid to falling dipping/ mid mid mid to falling mid (aspirated) high

(aspirated)

mid to falling

(aspirated)

high/mid
Remark lenis voiceless dental affricate/ voiced dental affricate lenis voiceless retroflex affricate/ voiced retroflex affricate aspirated /t͡s/ aspirated /t͡ɕ/ glottal stop
Equivalents Standard Chinese Pinyin: 子 z [tsɨ]; English: z in zoo or zebra; strong z in English zip identical to the initial position of ng in Cantonese German pf «읗» = «euh» in pronunciation
10 obsolete double consonants

(IPA)

Hard consonants
/ɳ/ /l̥/ /pʰ/, /bʱ/ /z/ /ʑ/ /ŋ̊ʷ/ or /ɣ/ /ŋ̊/ /d͡z/ /d͡ʑ/ /ɦ/ or /ç/, /ɣ̈ʲ/, /ɣ̈/
Middle Chinese hn/nn hl/ll bh, bhh sh zh hngw/gh or gr hng dz, ds dzh hh or xh
Identified Chinese Character (Hanzi) 娘(낭)

/ɳ/

郞(랑)

/ɫ/

邪(사)

/z/

禪(선)

/ʑ/

從(종)

/d͡z/

牀(상)

/d͡ʑ/

洪(홍)

/ɦ/

Remark aspirated aspirated unaspirated fortis voiceless dental affricate unaspirated fortis voiceless retroflex affricate guttural
  • 66 obsolete clusters of two consonants: ᇃ, ᄓ /ng/ (like English think), ㅦ /nd/ (as English Monday), ᄖ, ㅧ /ns/ (as English Pennsylvania), ㅨ, ᇉ /tʰ/ (as ㅌ; nt in the language Esperanto), ᄗ /dg/ (similar to ㄲ; equivalent to the word 밖 in Korean), ᇋ /dr/ (like English in drive), ᄘ /ɭ/ (similar to French Belle), ㅪ, ㅬ /lz/ (similar to English lisp but without the vowel), ᇘ, ㅭ /t͡ɬ/ (tl or ll; as in Nahuatl), ᇚ /ṃ/ (mh or mg, mm in English hammer, Middle Korean: pronounced as 목 mog with the ㄱ in the word almost silent), ᇛ, ㅮ, ㅯ (similar to ㅂ in Korean 없다), ㅰ, ᇠ, ᇡ, ㅲ, ᄟ, ㅳ bd (assimilated later into ㄸ), ᇣ, ㅶ bj (assimilated later into ㅉ), ᄨ /bj/ (similar to 비추 in Korean verb 비추다 bit-chu-da but without the vowel), ㅷ, ᄪ, ᇥ /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), ᄰ, ᄱ sm (assimilated later into nm), ㅽ sb (initial position; similar sound to ㅃ), ᄵ, ㅾ assimilated later into ㅉ), ᄷ, ᄸ, ᄹ /θ/, ᄺ/ɸ/, ᄻ, ᅁ, ᅂ /ð/, ᅃ, ᅄ /v/, ᅅ (assimilated later into ㅿ; English z), ᅆ, ᅈ, ᅉ, ᅊ, ᅋ, ᇬ, ᇭ, ㆂ, ㆃ, ᇯ, ᅍ, ᅒ, ᅓ, ᅖ, ᇵ, ᇶ, ᇷ, ᇸ
  • 17 obsolete clusters of three consonants: ᇄ, ㅩ /rgs/ (similar to «rx» in English name Marx), ᇏ, ᇑ /lmg/ (similar to English Pullman), ᇒ, ㅫ, ᇔ, ᇕ, ᇖ, ᇞ, ㅴ, ㅵ, ᄤ, ᄥ, ᄦ, ᄳ, ᄴ
1 obsolete vowel

(IPA)

Extremely soft vowel
/ʌ/

(also commonly found in the Jeju language: /ɒ/, closely similar to vowel:eo)

Letter name 아래아 (arae-a)
Remarks formerly the base vowel  eu in the early development of hangeul when it was considered vowelless, later development 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 → ᄉᆞᄫᅡ 하
Toneme low
  • 44 obsolete diphthongs and vowel sequences: ᆜ (/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: ᄀᆜ /gj/),ᆝ (/jɒ/; closest similarity to ㅛ,ㅑ, ㅠ, ㅕ, when follow by ㄱ on initial position, pronunciation does not produce any difference: ᄀᆝ /gj/), ᆢ(/j/; closest similarity to ㅢ, see former example inᆝ (/j/), ᅷ (/au̯/; Icelandic Á, aw/ow in English allow), ᅸ (/jau̯/; yao or iao; Chinese diphthong iao), ᅹ, ᅺ, ᅻ, ᅼ, ᅽ /ōu/ (紬 ㅊᅽ, ch-ieou; like Chinese: chōu), ᅾ, ᅿ, ᆀ, ᆁ, ᆂ (/w/, wo or wh, hw), ᆃ /ow/ (English window), ㆇ, ㆈ, ᆆ, ᆇ, ㆉ (/jø/; yue), ᆉ /wʌ/ or /oɐ/ (pronounced like u’a, in English suave), ᆊ, ᆋ, ᆌ, ᆍ (wu in English would), ᆎ /juə/ or /yua/ (like Chinese: 元 yuán), ᆏ /ū/ (like Chinese: 軍 jūn), ᆐ, ㆊ /ué/ jujə (ɥe; like Chinese: 瘸 q), ㆋ jujəj (ɥej; iyye), ᆓ, ㆌ /jü/ or /juj/ (/jy/ or ɥi; yu.i; like German Jürgen), ᆕ, ᆖ (the same as ᆜ in pronunciation, since there is no distinction due to it extreme similarity in pronunciation), ᆗ ɰju (ehyu or eyyu; like English news), ᆘ, ᆙ /ià/ (like Chinese: 墊 dn), ᆚ, ᆛ, ᆟ, ᆠ (/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:

5 Place of Articulation (오음, 五音) in Chinese Rime Table Tenuis
전청 (全淸)
Aspirate
차청 (次淸)
Voiced
전탁 (全濁)
Sonorant
차탁 (次濁)
Sibilants
치음 (齒音)
치두음 (齒頭音)
«tooth-head»

精(정) /t͡s/

淸(청) /t͡sʰ/

從(종) /d͡z/

心(심) /s/

邪(사) /z/
정치음 (正齒音)
«true front-tooth»

照(조) /t͡ɕ/

穿(천) /t͡ɕʰ/

牀(상) /d͡ʑ/

審(심) /ɕ/

禪(선) /ʑ/
Coronals
설음 (舌音)
설상음 (舌上音)
«tongue up»

知(지) /ʈ/

徹(철) /ʈʰ/

澄(징) /ɖ/


娘(낭) /ɳ/

Most common[edit]

  • ə (in Modern Korean called arae-a 아래아 «lower a«): Presumably pronounced [ʌ], similar to modern (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 ə formed a medial of its own, or was found in the diphthong əy, written with the dot under the consonant and (i) to its right, in the same fashion as or .
  • z (bansiot 반시옷 «half s«, banchieum 반치음): An unusual sound, perhaps IPA [ʝ̃] (a nasalized palatal fricative). Modern Korean words previously spelled with substitute or .
  • ʔ (yeorinhieut 여린히읗 «light hieut» or doenieung 된이응 «strong ieung»): A glottal stop, lighter than and harsher than .
  • ŋ (yedieung 옛이응) “old ieung” : The original letter for [ŋ]; now conflated with 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.)
  • β (gabyeounbieup 가벼운비읍, sungyeongeumbieup 순경음비읍): 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, w ([w] or [m]), f, and 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.

Restored letters[edit]

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.

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

and ⟨⟩ (히으), which was only pronounced between vowels.

Two modifications of the letter 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[edit]

Hangul jamo characters in Unicode

Hangul Compatibility Jamo block in Unicode

Hangul Jamo (U+1100U+11FF) and Hangul Compatibility Jamo (U+3130U+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.[69]

Hangul Jamo Extended-A (U+A960U+A97F) and Hangul Jamo Extended-B (U+D7B0U+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 (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
U+115x  HC 
F
U+116x  HJ 
F
U+117x
U+118x
U+119x
U+11Ax
U+11Bx
U+11Cx
U+11Dx
U+11Ex
U+11Fx
Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0
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» (PDF). The Unicode Standard. March 2020.
Hangul Jamo Extended-A[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (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 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points
Hangul Jamo Extended-B[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (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 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points
Hangul Compatibility Jamo[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+313x
U+314x
U+315x
U+316x   HF  
U+317x
U+318x
Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Enclosed Hangul characters in Unicode

Parenthesised (U+3200U+321E) and circled (U+3260U+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 (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 15.0
2.^ Grey area indicates non-assigned code point

Halfwidth Hangul jamo characters in Unicode

Half-width Hangul compatibility characters (U+FFA0U+FFDC) are in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block:

Hangul subset of Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
(U+FF00–U+FF9F omitted)
U+FFAx  HW 
HF
U+FFBx
U+FFCx
U+FFDx
(U+FFE0–U+FFEF omitted)
Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

The Korean alphabet in other Unicode blocks:

  • Tone marks for Middle Korean[70][71][72] 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+AC00U+D7A3)

Morpho-syllabic blocks[edit]

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 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, ng only occurs in final position, while the doubled letters that can occur in final position are limited to ss and kk.

Not including obsolete letters, 11,172 blocks are possible in the Korean alphabet.[73]

Letter placement within a block[edit]

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 bs, wo, or obsolete bsd, 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 eu, then it is written under the initial; if it has a vertical axis like i, then it is written to the right of the initial; and if it combines both orientations, like ui, then it wraps around the initial from the bottom to the right:

A final consonant, if present, is always written at the bottom, under the vowel. This is called 받침 batchim «supporting floor»:

A complex final is written left to right:

initial medial
final 1 final 2
initial
medial
final 1 final 2
initial med.
2
med.
fin. 1 fin. 2

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

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

Block shape[edit]

Normally the resulting block is written within a square. Some recent fonts (for example Eun,[74] 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.

These fonts have been used as design accents on signs or headings, rather than for typesetting large volumes of body text.

Linear Korean[edit]

Hangul text in a serif linear font that resembles Latin or Cyrillic letters.

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).[75] 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.[76]

Orthography[edit]

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-neun saram=i
       cannot-do-[attributive] person=[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.[citation needed]

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[edit]

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. 2007년 3월 22일 (22 March 2007).

Readability[edit]

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).[77] 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.[78] 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.[79] 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[edit]

Hangul TypeStyles sansPen.svg

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.[80]

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).[80]

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 () of such fonts usually lacks a serif that could be mistaken for the short vertical line of the letter (u).

See also[edit]

  • Cyrillization of Korean (Kontsevich System)
  • Hangul consonant and vowel tables
  • Hangul orthography
  • Hangul supremacy
  • 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[edit]

  1. ^ From Korean 한글, Korean pronunciation: [ha(ː)n.ɡɯl]. Hangul may also be written as Hangeul following South Korea’s standard Romanization.
  2. ^ ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ
  3. ^ ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ
  4. ^ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ
  5. ^ ㄳ ㄵ ㄶ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅄ
  6. ^ ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅢ
  7. ^
  8. ^ ㅿ ㆁ ㆆ
  9. ^ or not written
  10. ^ 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(입술소리) ㅁ은 입모양을 본뜨고), 齒音ㅅ 象齒形. ( 치음(잇 소리) ㅅ은 이빨 모양을 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 것이고, ㄴ에서 ㄷ으로, ㄷ에서 ㅌ으로 함과, ㅁ에서 ㅂ으로 ㅂ에서 ㅍ으로 함과, ㅅ에서 ㅈ으로 ㅈ에서 ㅊ으로 함과, ㅇ에서 ㅡ으로 ㅡ에서 ㅎ으로 함도, 그 소리를 따라 획을 더한 뜻이 같다 . 오직 ㅇ자는 다르다.) 半舌音ㄹ. 半齒音. 亦象舌齒之形而異其體. (반혓소리ㄹ과, 반잇소리 ‘세모자’는 또한 혀와 이의 꼴을 본뜨되, 그 본을 달리하여 획을 더하는 뜻이 없다.) …

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ «Hangul». Dictionary by Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  2. ^ «알고 싶은 한글». 국립국어원. National Institute of Korean Language. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
  3. ^ a b Kim-Renaud 1997, p. 15.
  4. ^ Cock, Joe (28 June 2016). «A linguist explains why Korean is the best written language». Business Insider. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  5. ^ Sampson 1990, p. 120.
  6. ^ a b Taylor 1980, p. 67–82.
  7. ^ a b «How was Hangul invented?». The Economist. 8 October 2013. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  8. ^ Pae, Hye K. (1 January 2011). «Is Korean a syllabic alphabet or an alphabetic syllabary». Writing Systems Research. 3 (2): 103–115. doi:10.1093/wsr/wsr002. ISSN 1758-6801. S2CID 144290565.
  9. ^ Kim, Taemin (22 March 2016). «System, learning material, and computer readable medium for executing hangul acquisition method based on phonetics». World Intellectual Property Organization. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  10. ^ a b «Hunminjeongeum Manuscript». Korean Cultural Heritage Administration. 2006. Archived from the original on 3 December 2017. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  11. ^ Fischer, pp. 190, 193.
  12. ^ a b «Individual Letters of Hangul and its Principles». National Institute of Korean Language. 2008. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  13. ^ McCune & Reischauer 1939, p. 52.
  14. ^ Lee & Ramsey 2000, p. 13.
  15. ^ Kim-Renaud 1997, p. 2.
  16. ^ a b c «Different Names for Hangeul». National Institute of Korean Language. 2008. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  17. ^ Hannas 1997, p. 57.
  18. ^ Chen, Jiangping (18 January 2016). Multilingual Access and Services for Digital Collections. ABC-CLIO. p. 66. ISBN 9781440839559. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
  19. ^ Invest Korea Journal. Vol. 23. Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. 1 January 2005. Retrieved 20 September 2016. They later devised three different systems for writing Korean with Chinese characters: Hyangchal, Gukyeol and Idu. These systems were similar to those developed later in Japan and were probably used as models by the Japanese.
  20. ^ «Korea Now». Korea Herald. Vol. 29. 1 July 2000. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
  21. ^ a b c «The Background of the invention of Hangeul». National Institute of Korean Language. The National Academy of the Korean Language. 2008. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  22. ^ Koerner, E. F. K.; Asher, R. E. (28 June 2014). Concise History of the Language Sciences: From the Sumerians to the Cognitivists. Elsevier. p. 54. ISBN 9781483297545. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
  23. ^ «Want to know about Hangeul?». National Institute of Korean Language. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
  24. ^ Hunmin Jeongeum Haerye, postface of Jeong Inji, p. 27a, translation from Gari K. Ledyard, The Korean Language Reform of 1446, p. 258
  25. ^ a b c d e f Pratt, Rutt, Hoare, 1999. Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary. Routledge.
  26. ^ a b «4. The providing process of Hangeul». The National Academy of the Korean Language. January 2004. Retrieved 19 May 2008.
  27. ^ «Jeongeumcheong, synonymous with Eonmuncheong (정음청 正音廳, 동의어: 언문청)» (in Korean). Nate / Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Retrieved 19 May 2008.
  28. ^ «Korea Britannica article» (in Korean). Enc.daum.net. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
  29. ^ WorldCat, Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu Archived 4 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine; alternate romaji Sankoku Tsūran Zusetsu Archived 6 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine
  30. ^ Cullen, Louis M. (2003). A History of Japan, 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds, p. 137., p. 137, at Google Books
  31. ^ Vos, Ken. «Accidental acquisitions: The nineteenth-century Korean collections in the National Museum of Ethnology, Part 1», Archived 2012-06-22 at the Wayback Machine p. 6 (pdf p. 7); Klaproth, Julius. (1832). San kokf tsou ran to sets, ou Aperçu général des trois royaumes, pp. 19 n1., p. 19, at Google Books
  32. ^ Klaproth, pp. 1–168., p. 1, at Google Books
  33. ^ Silva, David J. (2008). «Missionary Contributions toward the Revaluation of Han’geul in Late 19th Century Korea». International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 2008 (192): 57–74. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.527.8160. doi:10.1515/ijsl.2008.035. S2CID 43569773.
  34. ^ «Korean History». Korea.assembly.go.kr. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
  35. ^ Park, Jung Hwan (29 September 2019). 한글, 고종황제 드높이고 주시경 지켜내다 [Hangul, raise the status of Emperor Gojong and protect Ju Si-geong]. news1 (in Korean). Retrieved 29 September 2019.
  36. ^ «Hangul 한글«. The modern and contemporary history of Hangul (한글의 근·현대사) (in Korean). Daum / Britannica. 26 June 2002. Retrieved 19 May 2008. 1937년 7월 중일전쟁을 도발한 일본은 한민족 말살정책을 노골적으로 드러내, 1938년 4월에는 조선어과 폐지와 조선어 금지 및 일본어 상용을 강요했다.
  37. ^ LEE, Hyong Cheol (28 December 2016). «植民地支配下の朝鮮語» [Korean Language under the rule of Japanese Colony]. Journal of the Faculty of Global and Media Studies (in Japanese). 1 (University of Nagasaki): 7–19. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
  38. ^ a b Byon, Andrew Sangpil (2017). Modern Korean Grammar: A Practical Guide. Taylor & Francis. pp. 3–18. ISBN 978-1351741293.
  39. ^ Miyake, Marc Hideo (1998). «Review of Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma». Korean Studies. 22: 114–121. ISSN 0145-840X. JSTOR 23719388.
  40. ^ 洪惟仁 (2010). «閩南語書寫法的理想與現實» [Idealism vs. Reality: Writing Systems for Taiwanese Southern Min] (PDF). 臺灣語文研究 (in Chinese). 5 (1): 89, 101–105.
  41. ^ 楊允言; 張學謙; 呂美親 (2008). 台語文運動訪談暨史料彙編 [Compilation of Historical Materials and Interviews on the Written Taiwanese Movement] (in Chinese). Taiwan: 國史館. pp. 284–285. ISBN 9789860132946.
  42. ^ Dong Zhongsi (董忠司), 「台灣閩南語槪論」講授資料彙編, Taiwan Languages and Literature Society
  43. ^ «Linguistics Scholar Seeks to Globalize Korean Alphabet». Korea Times. 15 October 2008.
  44. ^ Choe, Sang-Hun (11 September 2009). «South Korea’s Latest Export — Its Alphabet — NYTimes.com». The New York Times.
  45. ^ «Hangeul didn’t become Cia Cia’s official writing». Korea Times. 6 October 2010.
  46. ^ Indonesian tribe to use Korean alphabet Archived August 12, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  47. ^ Si-soo, Park (6 August 2009). «Indonesian Tribe Picks Hangeul as Writing System». Korea Times.
  48. ^ Kurt Achin (29 January 2010). «Indonesian Tribe Learns to Write with Korean Alphabet». Voice of America. Archived from the original on 17 January 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
  49. ^ «Gov’t to correct textbook on Cia Cia». Korea Times. 18 October 2012.
  50. ^ a b c d e Kim-Renaud, Young-Key. (2009). Korean : an essential grammar. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-38513-8. OCLC 245598979.
  51. ^ a b Shin, Jiyoung (15 June 2015). «Vowels and Consonants». In Brown, Lucien; Yeon, Jaehoon (eds.). The Handbook of Korean Linguistics: Brown/The Handbook of Korean Linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. doi:10.1002/9781118371008. ISBN 978-1-118-37100-8.
  52. ^ «한글 맞춤법[시행 2017. 3. 28.] 문화체육관광부 고시 제2017-12호(2017. 3. 28.)» [Hangul Spelling [Enforcement 2017. 3. 28.] Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Notice No. 2017-12 (2017. 3. 28.)]. ko: 국립국어원, (The National Institute of the Korean Language). 28 March 2017. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  53. ^ «A Quick Guide to Hangul, the Korean Alphabet – Pronunciation and Rules». Mondly Blog. 25 May 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  54. ^ «The Hunmin Chongum Manuscript | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization». www.unesco.org. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  55. ^ a b c «Korean Language in North and South Korea: The Differences». Day Translations Blog. 1 May 2018. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  56. ^ «The Korean Language: The Key Differences Between North and South». Legal Translations. 16 March 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  57. ^ «An introduction to Korean Standard KS X 1026-1:2007, Hangul processing guide for information interchange» (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 2008. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  58. ^ «Letter Names (Hangul 한글) | Taekwondo Preschool». www.taekwondopreschool.com. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  59. ^ «Korean Alphabet». thinkzone.wlonk.com. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  60. ^ «Korean alphabet, pronunciation and language». www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  61. ^ Kim-Renaud, Young-Key (2012). Tranter, Nicolas (ed.). The Languages of Japan and Korea. Oxon, UK: Routledge. p. 127. ISBN 9780415462877.
  62. ^ The Japanese/Korean Vowel Correspondences Archived 2 January 2018 at the Wayback Machine by Bjarke Frellesvig and John Whitman. Section 3 deals with Middle Korean vowels.
  63. ^ Korean orthography rules Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine
  64. ^ The Korean language reform of 1446: the origin, background, and Early History of the Korean Alphabet, Gari Keith Ledyard. University of California, 1966, p. 367–368.
  65. ^ Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, The World’s Writing Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 219–220
  66. ^ «Today is a Holiday in Honor of the World’s Most Remarkable Alphabet». mentalfloss.com. 9 October 2017. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  67. ^ Korea Newsreview. (1988). South Korea: Korea News review Incorporated. Volume 17, Issues 27-53, page 29
  68. ^ Papers of the C.I.C. Far Eastern Language Institute, the University of Michigan, 1968, Indiana University, 1969 [and] the University of Minnesota, 1970. Richard B. Mather, Editor. (1973). United States: Panel on Far Eastern Language Institutes of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
  69. ^ Yergeau, F. (1998). «3. Versions of the standards». UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646. doi:10.17487/rfc2279. RFC 2279.
  70. ^ Ho-Min Sohn (29 March 2001). The Korean Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 48–. ISBN 978-0-521-36943-5.
  71. ^ Iksop Lee; S. Robert Ramsey (2000). The Korean Language. SUNY Press. pp. 315–. ISBN 978-0-7914-4832-8.
  72. ^ Ki-Moon Lee; S. Robert Ramsey (3 March 2011). A History of the Korean Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 168–. ISBN 978-1-139-49448-9.
  73. ^ Park, ChangHo (2009). Lee, Chungmin; Simpson, Greg B; Kim, Youngjin; Li, Ping (eds.). «Visual processing of Hangul, the Korean script». The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics. III: 379–389. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511596865.030. ISBN 9780511596865 – via Google Books.
  74. ^ Welch, Craig. «Korean Unicode Fonts». www.wazu.jp.
  75. ^ Pratt, Keith L.; Rutt, Richard (13 September 1999). Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary – Keith L. Pratt, Richard Rutt, James Hoare – Google Boeken. ISBN 9780700704637. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
  76. ^ Ezer, Oded (9 December 2006). «Hangul Dada, Seoul, Korea». Flickr. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
  77. ^ Taylor 1980, p. 71.
  78. ^ Taylor 1980, p. 73.
  79. ^ Taylor 1980, p. 70.
  80. ^ a b «Koreana Autumn 2007 (English)». Koreana Autumn 2007 (English). Retrieved 13 October 2021.

References[edit]

  • Chang, Suk-jin (1996). «Scripts and Sounds». Korean. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-55619-728-4. (Volume 4 of the London Oriental and African Language Library).
  • «Hangeul Matchumbeop». The Ministry of Education of South Korea. 1988.
  • Hannas, W[illia]m C. (1997). Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1892-0.
  • Kim-Renaud, Young-Key, ed. (1997). The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure. University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1723-7.
  • Lee, Iksop; Ramsey, Samuel Robert (2000). The Korean Language. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-9130-0.
  • McCune, G[eorge] M.; Reischauer, E[dwin] O. (1939). «The Romanization of the Korean Language: Based upon Its Phonetic Structure» (PDF). Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. XXIX: 1–55. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 July 2015. Retrieved 12 August 2015.
  • Sampson, Geoffrey (1990). Writing Systems. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1756-4.
  • Silva, David J. (2002). «Western attitudes toward the Korean language: An Overview of Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Mission Literature» (PDF). Korean Studies. 26 (2): 270–286. doi:10.1353/ks.2004.0013. hdl:10106/11257. S2CID 55677193.
  • Sohn, Ho-Min (2001). The Korean Language. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36943-5.
  • Song, Jae Jung (2005). The Korean Language: Structure, Use and Context. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-39082-5.
  • Taylor, Insup (1980). «The Korean writing system: An alphabet? A syllabary? A logography?». In Kolers, P.A.; Wrolstad, M. E.; Bouma, Herman (eds.). Processing of Visual Language. Vol. 2. New York: Plenum Press. ISBN 978-0306405761. OCLC 7099393.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hangul.

  • Korean alphabet and pronunciation by Omniglot
  • Online Hangul tutorial at Langintro.com
  • Hangul table with Audio Slideshow
  • Technical information on Hangul and Unicode
  • Hangul Sound Keyboard at Kmaru.com
  • Learn Hangul at Korean Wiki Project
Korean alphabet

한글 / 조선글
韓㐎 / 朝鮮㐎
Hangul (Hangeul) / Chosŏn’gŭl

Hangul chosongul fontembed.svg

«Chosŏn’gŭl» (top) and «Hangul» (bottom)

Script type Featural

alphabet

Creator Sejong of Joseon

Time period

1443–present
Direction Hangul is usually written horizontally, from left to right and classically from right to left. It is also written vertically, from top to bottom and from right to left.
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 alias

Hangul

Unicode range

  • U+1100–U+11FF
  • U+3130–U+318F
  • U+A960–U+A97F
  • U+D7B0–U+D7FF
 This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul[a] ( HAHN-gool[1]) in South Korea and Chosŏn’gŭl 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, although it is not necessarily an abugida.[6][8]

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 its 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] As a result, Hangul was initially denounced and disparaged by the Korean educated class. The script became known as eonmun («vernacular writing», 언문, 諺文) and became the primary Korean script only in the decades after Korea’s independence from Japan in the mid-20th century.[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 ㄲㅜㄹㅂㅓㄹ.[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 in the Cia-Cia language.

Names[edit]

Official names[edit]

Korean name (North Korea)
Chosŏn’gŭl

조선글

Hancha

朝鮮

Revised Romanization Joseon(-)geul
McCune–Reischauer Chosŏn’gŭl
IPA Korean pronunciation: [tso.sɔn.ɡɯl]
Korean name (South Korea)
Hangul

한글

Hanja

Revised Romanization Han(-)geul
McCune–Reischauer Han’gŭl[13]
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 (훈민정음) 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 (), meaning great, and geul (), 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[edit]

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[edit]

Creation[edit]

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. 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.»[24]

A page from the Hunminjeong’eum Eonhae. The Hangul-only column, third from the left (나랏말ᄊᆞ미), 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.[citation needed]

Opposition[edit]

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.[25]

King Yeonsangun banned the study and publication of the Korean alphabet in 1504, after a document criticizing the king was published.[26] Similarly, King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun, a governmental institution related to Hangul research, in 1506.[27]

Revival[edit]

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.[28] However, the use of the Korean alphabet had gone without orthographical standardization for so long that spelling had become quite irregular.[25]

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.[29] This book, which was published in 1785, described the Joseon Kingdom[30] and the Korean alphabet.[31] In 1832, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh’s French translation.[32]

Thanks to growing Korean nationalism, the Gabo Reformists’ push, and Western missionaries’ promotion of the Korean alphabet in schools and literature,[33] the Hangul Korean alphabet was adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894.[26] 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.[34]

Reforms and suppression under Japanese rule[edit]

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.[35]

The orthography of the Korean alphabet was partially standardized in 1912, when the vowel arae-a ()—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.[25]

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 was written alone (without a vowel) when it occurred between nouns, and the nominative particle was introduced after vowels, replacing .[25]

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.[25] 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.[36][37]

Further reforms[edit]

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.[25]

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[edit]

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 the 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.[38]

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.[38]

In North Korea[edit]

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.[39]

Non-Korean languages[edit]

Systems that employed Hangul letters with modified rules were attempted by linguists such as Hsu Tsao-te [zh] 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).[40][41][42]

The Hunminjeong’eum Society in Seoul attempted to spread the use of Hangul to unwritten languages of Asia.[43] In 2009, it was unofficially adopted by the town of Baubau, in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, to write the Cia-Cia language.[44][45][46][47]

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.[48] However, it was confirmed in October 2012 that the attempts to disseminate the use of the Korean alphabet in Indonesia ultimately failed.[49]

Letters[edit]

Korean alphabet letters and pronunciation

Letters in the Korean alphabet are called jamo (자모). There are 19 consonants (자음) and 21 vowels (모음) used in the modern alphabet. They were first named in Hunmongjahoe, a hanja textbook written by Choe Sejin.

Consonants[edit]

The shape of tongue when pronouncing ㄱ

The shape of tongue when pronouncing ㄱ (g)

The shape of tongue when pronouncing ㄴ

The shape of tongue when pronouncing ㄴ (n)

The shape of teeth and tongue when pronouncing ㅅ

The shape of teeth and tongue when pronouncing ㅅ (s)

ㅇ is the mimic of the throat hole.

ㅇ (ng) is similar to the throat hole.

ㅁ is the mimic of mouth closed.

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
Initial Romanization g kk n d tt r m b pp s ss [i] j jj ch k t p h
IPA /k/ /k͈/ /n/ /t/ /t͈/ /ɾ/ /m/ /p/ /p͈/ /s/ /s͈/ silent /t͡ɕ/ /t͈͡ɕ͈/ /t͡ɕʰ/ /kʰ/ /tʰ/ /pʰ/ /h/
Final Romanization k k n t l m p t t ng t t k t p t
g kk n d l m b s ss ng j ch k t p h
IPA /k̚/ /n/ /t̚/ /ɭ/ /m/ /p̚/ /t̚/ /ŋ/ /t̚/ /t̚/ /k̚/ /t̚/ /p̚/ /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).[50] The chart below lists the Korean consonants by their respective categories and subcategories.

Consonants in Standard Korean (orthography)[51]

Bilabial Alveolar Alveolo-palatal Velar Glottal
Obstruent Stop (plosive) Lax p (ㅂ) t (ㄷ) k (ㄱ)
Tense (ㅃ) (ㄸ) (ㄲ)
Aspirated (ㅍ) (ㅌ) (ㅋ)
Fricative Lax s (ㅅ) h (ㅎ)
Tense (ㅆ)
Affricate Lax t͡ɕ (ㅈ)
Tense t͈͡ɕ͈ (ㅉ)
Aspirated t͡ɕʰ (ㅊ)
Sonorant Nasal m (ㅁ) n (ㄴ) ŋ (ㅇ)
Liquid (lateral approximant) l (ㄹ)

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.[50]

Korean sonorants are voiced.

Consonant assimilation[edit]

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 block’s initial letter-sound[clarification needed]
(e.g. 강루 – kang+ru = kang+nu[clarification needed], 있어 – it+eo = iss+eo, 합니다 – hap+ni+da = ham-ni-da)

Preceding syllable block’s final letter-sound

(k)

(k)

(n)

(t)

(l)

(m)

(p)

(t)

(t)

(ng)

(t)

(t)

(k)

(t)

(p)

(t)

Subsequent syllable block’s initial letter ㄱ(g) k+k n+g t+g l+g m+g b+g t+g t+g t+g t+g p+g h+k
ㄴ(n) ng+n n+n l+n m+n m+n t+n n+t t+n t+n t+n p+n h+n
ㄷ(d) k+d n+d t+t l+d m+d p+d t+t t+t t+t t+t k+d t+t p+d h+t
ㄹ(r) g+n n+n l+l m+n m+n ng+n r
ㅁ(m) g+m n+m t+m l+m m+m m+m t+m ng+m t+m t+m k+d t+m p+m h+m
ㅂ(b) g+b p+p t+b
ㅅ (s) ss+s
ㅇ(∅) g kk+h n t r m p s ss ng+h t+ch t+ch k+h t+ch p+h h
ㅈ(j) t+ch
ㅎ(h) k kk+h n+h t r/

l+h

m+h p t t+ch t+ch k t p

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 chords that are not tensed, they are more likely to be affected by surrounding voiced sounds (which are produced by vocal chords that are vibrating).[50]

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.[50]

  • 밥 [pap̚] – ‘rice’
  • 보리밥 [poɾibap̚] – ‘barley mixed with rice’

  • 다 [ta] – ‘all’
  • 맏 [mat̚] – ‘oldest’
  • 맏아들 [madadɯɭ] – ‘oldest son’

  • 죽 [t͡ɕuk] – ‘porridge’
  • 콩죽 [kʰoŋd͡ʑuk̚] – ‘bean porridge’

  • 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.[50]

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 [ip̚k͈u].

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 dag; [preceding another syllable block] 없다 – eop-ta, 앉아 an-ja)

Preceding syllable block’s final letter*

(gs)

(nj)

(nh)

(lg)

(lm)

(lb)

(ls)

(lṭ)

(lp̣)

(lh)

(ps)

(pronunciation in isolation) g nj nh g m b s h p
Subsequent block’s initial letter** ㅇ(∅) g+s n+j l+h l+g l+m l+b l+s l+ṭ l+p̣ l+h p+s
ㄷ(d) g+t nj+d/

nt+ch

n+t g+d m+d b+d l+t l+ṭ p̣+d l+t p+t

In cases where consonant clusters are followed by words beginning with ㅇ or ㄷ, 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, 삶이 is pronounced as [sal.mi].

Vowels[edit]

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
Revised Romanization a ae ya yae eo e yeo ye o wa wae oe yo u wo we wi yu eu ui/

yi

i
IPA /a/ /ɛ/ /ja/ /jɛ/ /ʌ/ /e/ /jʌ/ /je/ /o/ /wa/ /wɛ/ /ø/ ~ [we] /jo/ /u/ /wʌ/ /we/ /y/ ~ [ɥi] /ju/ /ɯ/ /ɰi/ /i/

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.[who?] 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).[51] 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.[52]

Alphabetic order[edit]

Alphabetic order in the Korean alphabet is called the ganada order, (가나다순) 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.[53]

Historical orders[edit]

The order from the Hunminjeongeum in 1446 was:[54]

ㄱ ㄲ ㅋ ㆁ ㄷ ㄸ ㅌ ㄴ ㅂ ㅃ ㅍ ㅁ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅅ ㅆ ㆆ ㅎ ㆅ ㅇ ㄹ ㅿ
ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ ㅗ ㅏ ㅜ ㅓ ㅛ ㅑ ㅠ ㅕ

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 (null) and (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.[55][56]

North Korean order[edit]

The new, double, letters are placed at the end of the consonants, just before the null , so as not to alter the traditional order of the rest of the alphabet.

ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ
ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅚ ㅟ ㅢ ㅘ ㅝ ㅙ ㅞ

All digraphs and trigraphs, including the old diphthongs and , 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 ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅁ ㅂ ㅄ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㅆ

(None means there is no final letter.)

Unlike when it is initial, this is pronounced, as the nasal 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.[55]

South Korean order[edit]

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

ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ

ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ

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 or 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 ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅁ ㅂ ㅄ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ

Every syllable begins with a consonant (or the silent ㅇ) that is followed by a vowel (e.g. + = ). Some syllables such as and have a final consonant or final consonant cluster (받침). Then, 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.[55]

The sort order including archaic Hangul letters defined in the South Korean national standard KS X 1026-1 is:[57]

  • Initial consonants: ᄀ, ᄁ, ᅚ, ᄂ, ᄓ, ᄔ, ᄕ, ᄖ, ᅛ, ᅜ, ᅝ, ᄃ, ᄗ, ᄄ, ᅞ, ꥠ, ꥡ, ꥢ, ꥣ, ᄅ, ꥤ, ꥥ, ᄘ, ꥦ, ꥧ, ᄙ, ꥨ, ꥩ, ꥪ, ꥫ, ꥬ, ꥭ, ꥮ, ᄚ, ᄛ, ᄆ, ꥯ, ꥰ, ᄜ, ꥱ, ᄝ, ᄇ, ᄞ, ᄟ, ᄠ, ᄈ, ᄡ, ᄢ, ᄣ, ᄤ, ᄥ, ᄦ, ꥲ, ᄧ, ᄨ, ꥳ, ᄩ, ᄪ, ꥴ, ᄫ, ᄬ, ᄉ, ᄭ, ᄮ, ᄯ, ᄰ, ᄱ, ᄲ, ᄳ, ᄊ, ꥵ, ᄴ, ᄵ, ᄶ, ᄷ, ᄸ, ᄹ, ᄺ, ᄻ, ᄼ, ᄽ, ᄾ, ᄿ, ᅀ, ᄋ, ᅁ, ᅂ, ꥶ, ᅃ, ᅄ, ᅅ, ᅆ, ᅇ, ᅈ, ᅉ, ᅊ, ᅋ, ꥷ, ᅌ, ᄌ, ᅍ, ᄍ, ꥸ, ᅎ, ᅏ, ᅐ, ᅑ, ᄎ, ᅒ, ᅓ, ᅔ, ᅕ, ᄏ, ᄐ, ꥹ, ᄑ, ᅖ, ꥺ, ᅗ, ᄒ, ꥻ, ᅘ, ᅙ, ꥼ, (filler; U+115F)
  • Medial vowels: (filler; U+1160), ᅡ, ᅶ, ᅷ, ᆣ, ᅢ, ᅣ, ᅸ, ᅹ, ᆤ, ᅤ, ᅥ, ᅺ, ᅻ, ᅼ, ᅦ, ᅧ, ᆥ, ᅽ, ᅾ, ᅨ, ᅩ, ᅪ, ᅫ, ᆦ, ᆧ, ᅿ, ᆀ, ힰ, ᆁ, ᆂ, ힱ, ᆃ, ᅬ, ᅭ, ힲ, ힳ, ᆄ, ᆅ, ힴ, ᆆ, ᆇ, ᆈ, ᅮ, ᆉ, ᆊ, ᅯ, ᆋ, ᅰ, ힵ, ᆌ, ᆍ, ᅱ, ힶ, ᅲ, ᆎ, ힷ, ᆏ, ᆐ, ᆑ, ᆒ, ힸ, ᆓ, ᆔ, ᅳ, ힹ, ힺ, ힻ, ힼ, ᆕ, ᆖ, ᅴ, ᆗ, ᅵ, ᆘ, ᆙ, ힽ, ힾ, ힿ, ퟀ, ᆚ, ퟁ, ퟂ, ᆛ, ퟃ, ᆜ, ퟄ, ᆝ, ᆞ, ퟅ, ᆟ, ퟆ, ᆠ, ᆡ, ᆢ
  • Final consonants: (none), ᆨ, ᆩ, ᇺ, ᇃ, ᇻ, ᆪ, ᇄ, ᇼ, ᇽ, ᇾ, ᆫ, ᇅ, ᇿ, ᇆ, ퟋ, ᇇ, ᇈ, ᆬ, ퟌ, ᇉ, ᆭ, ᆮ, ᇊ, ퟍ, ퟎ, ᇋ, ퟏ, ퟐ, ퟑ, ퟒ, ퟓ, ퟔ, ᆯ, ᆰ, ퟕ, ᇌ, ퟖ, ᇍ, ᇎ, ᇏ, ᇐ, ퟗ, ᆱ, ᇑ, ᇒ, ퟘ, ᆲ, ퟙ, ᇓ, ퟚ, ᇔ, ᇕ, ᆳ, ᇖ, ᇗ, ퟛ, ᇘ, ᆴ, ᆵ, ᆶ, ᇙ, ퟜ, ퟝ, ᆷ, ᇚ, ퟞ, ퟟ, ᇛ, ퟠ, ᇜ, ퟡ, ᇝ, ᇞ, ᇟ, ퟢ, ᇠ, ᇡ, ᇢ, ᆸ, ퟣ, ᇣ, ퟤ, ퟥ, ퟦ, ᆹ, ퟧ, ퟨ, ퟩ, ᇤ, ᇥ, ᇦ, ᆺ, ᇧ, ᇨ, ᇩ, ퟪ, ᇪ, ퟫ, ᆻ, ퟬ, ퟭ, ퟮ, ퟯ, ퟰ, ퟱ, ퟲ, ᇫ, ퟳ, ퟴ, ᆼ, ᇰ, ᇬ, ᇭ, ퟵ, ᇱ, ᇲ, ᇮ, ᇯ, ퟶ, ᆽ, ퟷ, ퟸ, ퟹ, ᆾ, ᆿ, ᇀ, ᇁ, ᇳ, ퟺ, ퟻ, ᇴ, ᇂ, ᇵ, ᇶ, ᇷ, ᇸ, ᇹ
  • Sort order of Hangul consonants defined in the South Korean national standard KS X 1026-1

    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

    Sort order of Hangul vowels defined in the South Korean national standard KS X 1026-1

Letter names[edit]

names of the Korean consonant letters (South Korean)


names of the Korean vowel letters

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 euk, eut, and eut did not occur in Hanja, Choe gave those letters the modified names 기역 giyeok, 디귿 digeut, and 시옷 siot, using Hanja that did not fit the pattern (for 기역) or native Korean syllables (for 디귿 and 시옷).[58]

Originally, Choe gave , , , , , and the irregular one-syllable names of ji, chi, ḳi, ṭi, p̣i, 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[edit]

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 toen meaning hard.

Consonant
Name 기윽 니은 디읃 리을 미음 비읍 시읏 지읒 치읓 키읔 티읕 피읖 히읗 된기윽 된디읃 된비읍 된시읏 이응 된지읒
McCR kiŭk niŭn diŭt riŭl miŭm piŭp siŭt jiŭt chiŭt ḳiŭk ṭiŭt p̣iŭp hiŭt toen’giŭk toendiŭt toenbiŭp toensiŭt ‘iŭng toenjiŭt

In North Korea, an alternative way to refer to a consonant is letter + ŭ (), for example, gŭ () for the letter , and ssŭ () for the letter .

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

In South Korea[edit]

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 ssang meaning double.

Consonant
Name (Hangul) 기역 쌍기역 니은 디귿 쌍디귿 리을 미음 비읍 쌍비읍 시옷 쌍시옷 이응 지읒 쌍지읒 치읓 키읔 티읕 피읖 히읗
Name (romanised) gi-yeok ssang-giyeok ni-eun digeut ssang-digeut ri-eul mi-eum bi-eup ssang-bi-eup si-ot (shi-ot) ssang-si-ot (ssang-shi-ot) ‘i-eung ji-eut ssang-ji-eut chi-eut ḳi-euk ṭi-eut p̣i-eup hi-eut

Stroke order[edit]

Letters in the Korean alphabet have adopted certain rules of Chinese calligraphy, although and use a circle, which is not used in printed Chinese characters.[59][60]

  • ㄱ (giyeok 기역)

    (giyeok 기역)

  • ㄴ (nieun 니은)

    (nieun 니은)

  • ㄷ (digeut 디귿)

    (digeut 디귿)

  • ㄹ (rieul 리을)

    (rieul 리을)

  • ㅁ (mieum 미음)

    (mieum 미음)

  • ㅂ (bieup 비읍)

    (bieup 비읍)

  • ㅅ (siot 시옷)

    (siot 시옷)

  • ㅇ (ieung 이응)

    (ieung 이응)

  • ㅈ (jieut 지읒)

    (jieut 지읒)

  • ㅊ (chieut 치읓)

    (chieut 치읓)

  • ㅋ (ḳieuk 키읔)

    (ḳieuk 키읔)

  • ㅌ (ṭieut 티읕)

    (ṭieut 티읕)

  • ㅍ (p̣ieup 피읖)

    (p̣ieup 피읖)

  • ㅎ (hieuh 히읗)

    (hieuh 히읗)

  • ㅏ (a)

    (a)

  • ㅐ (ae)

    (ae)

  • ㅓ (eo)

    (eo)

  • ㅔ (e)

    (e)

  • ㅗ (o)

    (o)

  • ㅜ (u)

    (u)

  • ㅡ (eu)

    (eu)

For the iotized vowels, which are not shown, the short stroke is simply doubled.

Letter design[edit]

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

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 [ɛ], [ø], and [y] from [a], [o], and [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 [i]. Indeed, in many Korean dialects,[citation needed] including the standard dialect of Seoul, some of these may still be diphthongs. For example, in the Seoul dialect, may alternatively be pronounced [we̞], and [ɥi]. Note: [e] as a morpheme is ㅓ combined with ㅣ as a vertical stroke. As a phoneme, its sound is not by i mutation of [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[61] and is no longer written.

Consonant design[edit]

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

Vowel design[edit]

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[edit]

  • Horizontal letters: these are mid-high back vowels.
    • bright o
    • dark u
    • dark eu (ŭ)
  • Vertical letters: these were once low vowels.
    • bright a
    • dark eo (ŏ)
    • bright
    • neutral i

Compound vowels[edit]

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  u with dark  eo for wo; bright  o with bright  a for wa:

  •  wa =  o +  a
  •  wo =  u +  eo
  •  wae =  o +  ae
  •  we =  u +  e

The compound vowels ending in i were originally diphthongs. However, several have since evolved into pure vowels:

  •  ae =  a +  i (pronounced [ɛ])
  •  e =  eo +  i (pronounced [e])
  •  wae =  wa +  i
  •  oe =  o +  i (formerly pronounced [ø], see Korean phonology)
  •  we =  wo +  i
  •  wi =  u +  i (formerly pronounced [y], see Korean phonology)
  •  ui =  eu +  i

Iotized vowels[edit]

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

The simple iotized vowels are:

  •  ya from  a
  •  yeo from  eo
  •  yo from  o
  •  yu from  u

There are also two iotized diphthongs:

  •  yae from  ae
  •  ye from  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 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 ə, 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 ə is now obsolete except in the Jeju language.)

The third parameter in designing the vowel letters was choosing as the graphic base of and , and as the graphic base of and . 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 *ə, *e, *a. A third reconstruction is to make them all middle vowels as *ʌ, *ɤ, *a.[62] 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:

  *i     *u
 
    *o
  *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[edit]

The traditionally accepted account[j][63][unreliable source?] on the design of the letters is that the vowels are derived from various combinations of the following three components: ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ. Here, symbolically stands for the (sun in) heaven, stands for the (flat) earth, and 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. Note that two positive vowels (ㅗ ㅏ) including one are followed by two negative vowels including one , then by two positive vowels each including two of , and then by two negative vowels each including two of .

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. representing the [k] sound geometrically describes its tongue back raised.
  2. representing the [kʰ] sound is derived from by adding another stroke.
  3. representing the [ŋ] sound may have been derived from by addition of a stroke.
  4. representing the [t] sound is derived from by adding a stroke.
  5. representing the [tʰ] sound is derived from by adding another stroke.
  6. representing the [n] sound geometrically describes a tongue making contact with an upper palate.
  7. representing the [p] sound is derived from by adding a stroke.
  8. representing the [pʰ] sound is a variant of by adding another stroke.
  9. representing the [m] sound geometrically describes a closed mouth.
  10. representing the [t͡ɕ] sound is derived from by adding a stroke.
  11. representing the [t͡ɕʰ] sound is derived from by adding another stroke.
  12. representing the [s] sound geometrically describes the sharp teeth.[citation needed]
  13. representing the [ʔ] sound is derived from by adding a stroke.
  14. representing the [h] sound is derived from by adding another stroke.
  15. representing the absence of a consonant geometrically describes the throat.
  16. representing the [ɾ] and [ɭ] sounds geometrically describes the bending tongue.
  17. representing a weak sound describes the sharp teeth, but has a different origin than .[clarification needed]

Ledyard’s theory of consonant design[edit]

A close-up of the inscription on the statue of King Sejong above. 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 .
(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[64]

Ledyard posits that five of the Korean letters have shapes inspired by ‘Phags-pa; a sixth basic letter, the null initial , 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: , , , , and .[citation needed]

The Hunmin Jeong-eum states that King Sejong adapted the 古篆 (gojeon, Seal Script) in creating the Korean alphabet. The 古篆 has never been identified. The primary meaning of 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 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.[citation needed]

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 from by removing the top, it is not clear how to derive from in the traditional account, since the shape of is not analogous to those of the other plosives.[citation needed]

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 ) would have looked almost identical to the vowel [i]. Sejong’s solution solved both problems: The vertical stroke left from was added to the null symbol to create (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 and ng was eventually lost.)

Another letter composed of two elements to represent two regional pronunciations was , which transcribed the Chinese initial . This represented either m or w in various Chinese dialects, and was composed of [m] plus (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 . In ‘Phags-pa the Chinese initial 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 d [t] always had a small lip protruding from the upper left corner, just as the ‘Phags-pa d [t] did. This lip can be traced back to the Tibetan letter d.[citation needed]

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.[65]

Hangul supremacy theory[edit]

Hangul supremacy or Hangul scientific supremacy is the claim that the Hangul alphabet is the simplest and most logical writing system in the world.[66]

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.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]

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.»[67]

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.»[68]

Obsolete letters[edit]

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

(IPA)

Soft consonants
/l/, /ɾ/, /rʷ/ /ɱ/, /mʷ/ /β/, /bʷ/ /θ/ /ɕ/ South Korean: /z/

North Korean: /ɭ/

initial position: /j/

final position: /ŋ/

initial position only: /∅/ /t͡s/ /t͡ɕ/ /t͡sʰ/ /t͡ɕʰ/ /ɸ/, /fʰ/, /pʷ/ /ʔ/, /j/
Middle Chinese lh hm v th x, sch, sz South Korean: z/z’/zz

North Korean: rr/rd/tt

initial position: ye/’eu

final position: ng

initial position only: ō/ou z j c q fh/ ff South Korean: ‘/à

North Korean: heu/h’/eu

Identified Chinese Character (Hanzi) 微(미)

/ɱ/

非(비)

/f/

心(심)

/s/

審(심)

/ɕ/

South Korean: 子 /z/

North Korean: 穰 /ɭ/

final position: 業 /ŋ/ initial position:

欲 /∅/

精(정)

/t͡s/

照(조)

/t͡ɕ/

淸(청)

/t͡sʰ/

穿(천)

/t͡ɕʰ/

敷(부)

/fʰ/

挹(읍)

/ʔ/

Toneme falling mid to falling mid to falling mid mid to falling dipping/ mid mid mid to falling mid (aspirated) high

(aspirated)

mid to falling

(aspirated)

high/mid
Remark lenis voiceless dental affricate/ voiced dental affricate lenis voiceless retroflex affricate/ voiced retroflex affricate aspirated /t͡s/ aspirated /t͡ɕ/ glottal stop
Equivalents Standard Chinese Pinyin: 子 z [tsɨ]; English: z in zoo or zebra; strong z in English zip identical to the initial position of ng in Cantonese German pf «읗» = «euh» in pronunciation
10 obsolete double consonants

(IPA)

Hard consonants
/ɳ/ /l̥/ /pʰ/, /bʱ/ /z/ /ʑ/ /ŋ̊ʷ/ or /ɣ/ /ŋ̊/ /d͡z/ /d͡ʑ/ /ɦ/ or /ç/, /ɣ̈ʲ/, /ɣ̈/
Middle Chinese hn/nn hl/ll bh, bhh sh zh hngw/gh or gr hng dz, ds dzh hh or xh
Identified Chinese Character (Hanzi) 娘(낭)

/ɳ/

郞(랑)

/ɫ/

邪(사)

/z/

禪(선)

/ʑ/

從(종)

/d͡z/

牀(상)

/d͡ʑ/

洪(홍)

/ɦ/

Remark aspirated aspirated unaspirated fortis voiceless dental affricate unaspirated fortis voiceless retroflex affricate guttural
  • 66 obsolete clusters of two consonants: ᇃ, ᄓ /ng/ (like English think), ㅦ /nd/ (as English Monday), ᄖ, ㅧ /ns/ (as English Pennsylvania), ㅨ, ᇉ /tʰ/ (as ㅌ; nt in the language Esperanto), ᄗ /dg/ (similar to ㄲ; equivalent to the word 밖 in Korean), ᇋ /dr/ (like English in drive), ᄘ /ɭ/ (similar to French Belle), ㅪ, ㅬ /lz/ (similar to English lisp but without the vowel), ᇘ, ㅭ /t͡ɬ/ (tl or ll; as in Nahuatl), ᇚ /ṃ/ (mh or mg, mm in English hammer, Middle Korean: pronounced as 목 mog with the ㄱ in the word almost silent), ᇛ, ㅮ, ㅯ (similar to ㅂ in Korean 없다), ㅰ, ᇠ, ᇡ, ㅲ, ᄟ, ㅳ bd (assimilated later into ㄸ), ᇣ, ㅶ bj (assimilated later into ㅉ), ᄨ /bj/ (similar to 비추 in Korean verb 비추다 bit-chu-da but without the vowel), ㅷ, ᄪ, ᇥ /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), ᄰ, ᄱ sm (assimilated later into nm), ㅽ sb (initial position; similar sound to ㅃ), ᄵ, ㅾ assimilated later into ㅉ), ᄷ, ᄸ, ᄹ /θ/, ᄺ/ɸ/, ᄻ, ᅁ, ᅂ /ð/, ᅃ, ᅄ /v/, ᅅ (assimilated later into ㅿ; English z), ᅆ, ᅈ, ᅉ, ᅊ, ᅋ, ᇬ, ᇭ, ㆂ, ㆃ, ᇯ, ᅍ, ᅒ, ᅓ, ᅖ, ᇵ, ᇶ, ᇷ, ᇸ
  • 17 obsolete clusters of three consonants: ᇄ, ㅩ /rgs/ (similar to «rx» in English name Marx), ᇏ, ᇑ /lmg/ (similar to English Pullman), ᇒ, ㅫ, ᇔ, ᇕ, ᇖ, ᇞ, ㅴ, ㅵ, ᄤ, ᄥ, ᄦ, ᄳ, ᄴ
1 obsolete vowel

(IPA)

Extremely soft vowel
/ʌ/

(also commonly found in the Jeju language: /ɒ/, closely similar to vowel:eo)

Letter name 아래아 (arae-a)
Remarks formerly the base vowel  eu in the early development of hangeul when it was considered vowelless, later development 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 → ᄉᆞᄫᅡ 하
Toneme low
  • 44 obsolete diphthongs and vowel sequences: ᆜ (/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: ᄀᆜ /gj/),ᆝ (/jɒ/; closest similarity to ㅛ,ㅑ, ㅠ, ㅕ, when follow by ㄱ on initial position, pronunciation does not produce any difference: ᄀᆝ /gj/), ᆢ(/j/; closest similarity to ㅢ, see former example inᆝ (/j/), ᅷ (/au̯/; Icelandic Á, aw/ow in English allow), ᅸ (/jau̯/; yao or iao; Chinese diphthong iao), ᅹ, ᅺ, ᅻ, ᅼ, ᅽ /ōu/ (紬 ㅊᅽ, ch-ieou; like Chinese: chōu), ᅾ, ᅿ, ᆀ, ᆁ, ᆂ (/w/, wo or wh, hw), ᆃ /ow/ (English window), ㆇ, ㆈ, ᆆ, ᆇ, ㆉ (/jø/; yue), ᆉ /wʌ/ or /oɐ/ (pronounced like u’a, in English suave), ᆊ, ᆋ, ᆌ, ᆍ (wu in English would), ᆎ /juə/ or /yua/ (like Chinese: 元 yuán), ᆏ /ū/ (like Chinese: 軍 jūn), ᆐ, ㆊ /ué/ jujə (ɥe; like Chinese: 瘸 q), ㆋ jujəj (ɥej; iyye), ᆓ, ㆌ /jü/ or /juj/ (/jy/ or ɥi; yu.i; like German Jürgen), ᆕ, ᆖ (the same as ᆜ in pronunciation, since there is no distinction due to it extreme similarity in pronunciation), ᆗ ɰju (ehyu or eyyu; like English news), ᆘ, ᆙ /ià/ (like Chinese: 墊 dn), ᆚ, ᆛ, ᆟ, ᆠ (/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:

5 Place of Articulation (오음, 五音) in Chinese Rime Table Tenuis
전청 (全淸)
Aspirate
차청 (次淸)
Voiced
전탁 (全濁)
Sonorant
차탁 (次濁)
Sibilants
치음 (齒音)
치두음 (齒頭音)
«tooth-head»

精(정) /t͡s/

淸(청) /t͡sʰ/

從(종) /d͡z/

心(심) /s/

邪(사) /z/
정치음 (正齒音)
«true front-tooth»

照(조) /t͡ɕ/

穿(천) /t͡ɕʰ/

牀(상) /d͡ʑ/

審(심) /ɕ/

禪(선) /ʑ/
Coronals
설음 (舌音)
설상음 (舌上音)
«tongue up»

知(지) /ʈ/

徹(철) /ʈʰ/

澄(징) /ɖ/


娘(낭) /ɳ/

Most common[edit]

  • ə (in Modern Korean called arae-a 아래아 «lower a«): Presumably pronounced [ʌ], similar to modern (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 ə formed a medial of its own, or was found in the diphthong əy, written with the dot under the consonant and (i) to its right, in the same fashion as or .
  • z (bansiot 반시옷 «half s«, banchieum 반치음): An unusual sound, perhaps IPA [ʝ̃] (a nasalized palatal fricative). Modern Korean words previously spelled with substitute or .
  • ʔ (yeorinhieut 여린히읗 «light hieut» or doenieung 된이응 «strong ieung»): A glottal stop, lighter than and harsher than .
  • ŋ (yedieung 옛이응) “old ieung” : The original letter for [ŋ]; now conflated with 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.)
  • β (gabyeounbieup 가벼운비읍, sungyeongeumbieup 순경음비읍): 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, w ([w] or [m]), f, and 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.

Restored letters[edit]

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.

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

and ⟨⟩ (히으), which was only pronounced between vowels.

Two modifications of the letter 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[edit]

Hangul jamo characters in Unicode

Hangul Compatibility Jamo block in Unicode

Hangul Jamo (U+1100U+11FF) and Hangul Compatibility Jamo (U+3130U+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.[69]

Hangul Jamo Extended-A (U+A960U+A97F) and Hangul Jamo Extended-B (U+D7B0U+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 (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
U+115x  HC 
F
U+116x  HJ 
F
U+117x
U+118x
U+119x
U+11Ax
U+11Bx
U+11Cx
U+11Dx
U+11Ex
U+11Fx
Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0
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» (PDF). The Unicode Standard. March 2020.
Hangul Jamo Extended-A[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (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 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points
Hangul Jamo Extended-B[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (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 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points
Hangul Compatibility Jamo[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+313x
U+314x
U+315x
U+316x   HF  
U+317x
U+318x
Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Enclosed Hangul characters in Unicode

Parenthesised (U+3200U+321E) and circled (U+3260U+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 (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 15.0
2.^ Grey area indicates non-assigned code point

Halfwidth Hangul jamo characters in Unicode

Half-width Hangul compatibility characters (U+FFA0U+FFDC) are in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block:

Hangul subset of Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms[1][2]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
(U+FF00–U+FF9F omitted)
U+FFAx  HW 
HF
U+FFBx
U+FFCx
U+FFDx
(U+FFE0–U+FFEF omitted)
Notes

1.^ As of Unicode version 15.0
2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

The Korean alphabet in other Unicode blocks:

  • Tone marks for Middle Korean[70][71][72] 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+AC00U+D7A3)

Morpho-syllabic blocks[edit]

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 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, ng only occurs in final position, while the doubled letters that can occur in final position are limited to ss and kk.

Not including obsolete letters, 11,172 blocks are possible in the Korean alphabet.[73]

Letter placement within a block[edit]

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 bs, wo, or obsolete bsd, 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 eu, then it is written under the initial; if it has a vertical axis like i, then it is written to the right of the initial; and if it combines both orientations, like ui, then it wraps around the initial from the bottom to the right:

A final consonant, if present, is always written at the bottom, under the vowel. This is called 받침 batchim «supporting floor»:

A complex final is written left to right:

initial medial
final 1 final 2
initial
medial
final 1 final 2
initial med.
2
med.
fin. 1 fin. 2

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

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

Block shape[edit]

Normally the resulting block is written within a square. Some recent fonts (for example Eun,[74] 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.

These fonts have been used as design accents on signs or headings, rather than for typesetting large volumes of body text.

Linear Korean[edit]

Hangul text in a serif linear font that resembles Latin or Cyrillic letters.

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).[75] 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.[76]

Orthography[edit]

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-neun saram=i
       cannot-do-[attributive] person=[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.[citation needed]

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[edit]

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. 2007년 3월 22일 (22 March 2007).

Readability[edit]

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).[77] 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.[78] 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.[79] 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[edit]

Hangul TypeStyles sansPen.svg

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.[80]

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).[80]

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 () of such fonts usually lacks a serif that could be mistaken for the short vertical line of the letter (u).

See also[edit]

  • Cyrillization of Korean (Kontsevich System)
  • Hangul consonant and vowel tables
  • Hangul orthography
  • Hangul supremacy
  • 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[edit]

  1. ^ From Korean 한글, Korean pronunciation: [ha(ː)n.ɡɯl]. Hangul may also be written as Hangeul following South Korea’s standard Romanization.
  2. ^ ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ
  3. ^ ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ
  4. ^ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ
  5. ^ ㄳ ㄵ ㄶ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅄ
  6. ^ ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅢ
  7. ^
  8. ^ ㅿ ㆁ ㆆ
  9. ^ or not written
  10. ^ 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(입술소리) ㅁ은 입모양을 본뜨고), 齒音ㅅ 象齒形. ( 치음(잇 소리) ㅅ은 이빨 모양을 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 것이고, ㄴ에서 ㄷ으로, ㄷ에서 ㅌ으로 함과, ㅁ에서 ㅂ으로 ㅂ에서 ㅍ으로 함과, ㅅ에서 ㅈ으로 ㅈ에서 ㅊ으로 함과, ㅇ에서 ㅡ으로 ㅡ에서 ㅎ으로 함도, 그 소리를 따라 획을 더한 뜻이 같다 . 오직 ㅇ자는 다르다.) 半舌音ㄹ. 半齒音. 亦象舌齒之形而異其體. (반혓소리ㄹ과, 반잇소리 ‘세모자’는 또한 혀와 이의 꼴을 본뜨되, 그 본을 달리하여 획을 더하는 뜻이 없다.) …

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ «Hangul». Dictionary by Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  2. ^ «알고 싶은 한글». 국립국어원. National Institute of Korean Language. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
  3. ^ a b Kim-Renaud 1997, p. 15.
  4. ^ Cock, Joe (28 June 2016). «A linguist explains why Korean is the best written language». Business Insider. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  5. ^ Sampson 1990, p. 120.
  6. ^ a b Taylor 1980, p. 67–82.
  7. ^ a b «How was Hangul invented?». The Economist. 8 October 2013. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  8. ^ Pae, Hye K. (1 January 2011). «Is Korean a syllabic alphabet or an alphabetic syllabary». Writing Systems Research. 3 (2): 103–115. doi:10.1093/wsr/wsr002. ISSN 1758-6801. S2CID 144290565.
  9. ^ Kim, Taemin (22 March 2016). «System, learning material, and computer readable medium for executing hangul acquisition method based on phonetics». World Intellectual Property Organization. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  10. ^ a b «Hunminjeongeum Manuscript». Korean Cultural Heritage Administration. 2006. Archived from the original on 3 December 2017. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  11. ^ Fischer, pp. 190, 193.
  12. ^ a b «Individual Letters of Hangul and its Principles». National Institute of Korean Language. 2008. Retrieved 2 December 2017.
  13. ^ McCune & Reischauer 1939, p. 52.
  14. ^ Lee & Ramsey 2000, p. 13.
  15. ^ Kim-Renaud 1997, p. 2.
  16. ^ a b c «Different Names for Hangeul». National Institute of Korean Language. 2008. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  17. ^ Hannas 1997, p. 57.
  18. ^ Chen, Jiangping (18 January 2016). Multilingual Access and Services for Digital Collections. ABC-CLIO. p. 66. ISBN 9781440839559. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
  19. ^ Invest Korea Journal. Vol. 23. Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. 1 January 2005. Retrieved 20 September 2016. They later devised three different systems for writing Korean with Chinese characters: Hyangchal, Gukyeol and Idu. These systems were similar to those developed later in Japan and were probably used as models by the Japanese.
  20. ^ «Korea Now». Korea Herald. Vol. 29. 1 July 2000. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
  21. ^ a b c «The Background of the invention of Hangeul». National Institute of Korean Language. The National Academy of the Korean Language. 2008. Retrieved 3 December 2017.
  22. ^ Koerner, E. F. K.; Asher, R. E. (28 June 2014). Concise History of the Language Sciences: From the Sumerians to the Cognitivists. Elsevier. p. 54. ISBN 9781483297545. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
  23. ^ «Want to know about Hangeul?». National Institute of Korean Language. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
  24. ^ Hunmin Jeongeum Haerye, postface of Jeong Inji, p. 27a, translation from Gari K. Ledyard, The Korean Language Reform of 1446, p. 258
  25. ^ a b c d e f Pratt, Rutt, Hoare, 1999. Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary. Routledge.
  26. ^ a b «4. The providing process of Hangeul». The National Academy of the Korean Language. January 2004. Retrieved 19 May 2008.
  27. ^ «Jeongeumcheong, synonymous with Eonmuncheong (정음청 正音廳, 동의어: 언문청)» (in Korean). Nate / Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Retrieved 19 May 2008.
  28. ^ «Korea Britannica article» (in Korean). Enc.daum.net. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
  29. ^ WorldCat, Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu Archived 4 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine; alternate romaji Sankoku Tsūran Zusetsu Archived 6 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine
  30. ^ Cullen, Louis M. (2003). A History of Japan, 1582–1941: Internal and External Worlds, p. 137., p. 137, at Google Books
  31. ^ Vos, Ken. «Accidental acquisitions: The nineteenth-century Korean collections in the National Museum of Ethnology, Part 1», Archived 2012-06-22 at the Wayback Machine p. 6 (pdf p. 7); Klaproth, Julius. (1832). San kokf tsou ran to sets, ou Aperçu général des trois royaumes, pp. 19 n1., p. 19, at Google Books
  32. ^ Klaproth, pp. 1–168., p. 1, at Google Books
  33. ^ Silva, David J. (2008). «Missionary Contributions toward the Revaluation of Han’geul in Late 19th Century Korea». International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 2008 (192): 57–74. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.527.8160. doi:10.1515/ijsl.2008.035. S2CID 43569773.
  34. ^ «Korean History». Korea.assembly.go.kr. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
  35. ^ Park, Jung Hwan (29 September 2019). 한글, 고종황제 드높이고 주시경 지켜내다 [Hangul, raise the status of Emperor Gojong and protect Ju Si-geong]. news1 (in Korean). Retrieved 29 September 2019.
  36. ^ «Hangul 한글«. The modern and contemporary history of Hangul (한글의 근·현대사) (in Korean). Daum / Britannica. 26 June 2002. Retrieved 19 May 2008. 1937년 7월 중일전쟁을 도발한 일본은 한민족 말살정책을 노골적으로 드러내, 1938년 4월에는 조선어과 폐지와 조선어 금지 및 일본어 상용을 강요했다.
  37. ^ LEE, Hyong Cheol (28 December 2016). «植民地支配下の朝鮮語» [Korean Language under the rule of Japanese Colony]. Journal of the Faculty of Global and Media Studies (in Japanese). 1 (University of Nagasaki): 7–19. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
  38. ^ a b Byon, Andrew Sangpil (2017). Modern Korean Grammar: A Practical Guide. Taylor & Francis. pp. 3–18. ISBN 978-1351741293.
  39. ^ Miyake, Marc Hideo (1998). «Review of Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma». Korean Studies. 22: 114–121. ISSN 0145-840X. JSTOR 23719388.
  40. ^ 洪惟仁 (2010). «閩南語書寫法的理想與現實» [Idealism vs. Reality: Writing Systems for Taiwanese Southern Min] (PDF). 臺灣語文研究 (in Chinese). 5 (1): 89, 101–105.
  41. ^ 楊允言; 張學謙; 呂美親 (2008). 台語文運動訪談暨史料彙編 [Compilation of Historical Materials and Interviews on the Written Taiwanese Movement] (in Chinese). Taiwan: 國史館. pp. 284–285. ISBN 9789860132946.
  42. ^ Dong Zhongsi (董忠司), 「台灣閩南語槪論」講授資料彙編, Taiwan Languages and Literature Society
  43. ^ «Linguistics Scholar Seeks to Globalize Korean Alphabet». Korea Times. 15 October 2008.
  44. ^ Choe, Sang-Hun (11 September 2009). «South Korea’s Latest Export — Its Alphabet — NYTimes.com». The New York Times.
  45. ^ «Hangeul didn’t become Cia Cia’s official writing». Korea Times. 6 October 2010.
  46. ^ Indonesian tribe to use Korean alphabet Archived August 12, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  47. ^ Si-soo, Park (6 August 2009). «Indonesian Tribe Picks Hangeul as Writing System». Korea Times.
  48. ^ Kurt Achin (29 January 2010). «Indonesian Tribe Learns to Write with Korean Alphabet». Voice of America. Archived from the original on 17 January 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
  49. ^ «Gov’t to correct textbook on Cia Cia». Korea Times. 18 October 2012.
  50. ^ a b c d e Kim-Renaud, Young-Key. (2009). Korean : an essential grammar. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-38513-8. OCLC 245598979.
  51. ^ a b Shin, Jiyoung (15 June 2015). «Vowels and Consonants». In Brown, Lucien; Yeon, Jaehoon (eds.). The Handbook of Korean Linguistics: Brown/The Handbook of Korean Linguistics. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. doi:10.1002/9781118371008. ISBN 978-1-118-37100-8.
  52. ^ «한글 맞춤법[시행 2017. 3. 28.] 문화체육관광부 고시 제2017-12호(2017. 3. 28.)» [Hangul Spelling [Enforcement 2017. 3. 28.] Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism Notice No. 2017-12 (2017. 3. 28.)]. ko: 국립국어원, (The National Institute of the Korean Language). 28 March 2017. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  53. ^ «A Quick Guide to Hangul, the Korean Alphabet – Pronunciation and Rules». Mondly Blog. 25 May 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  54. ^ «The Hunmin Chongum Manuscript | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization». www.unesco.org. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  55. ^ a b c «Korean Language in North and South Korea: The Differences». Day Translations Blog. 1 May 2018. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  56. ^ «The Korean Language: The Key Differences Between North and South». Legal Translations. 16 March 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  57. ^ «An introduction to Korean Standard KS X 1026-1:2007, Hangul processing guide for information interchange» (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 2008. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  58. ^ «Letter Names (Hangul 한글) | Taekwondo Preschool». www.taekwondopreschool.com. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  59. ^ «Korean Alphabet». thinkzone.wlonk.com. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  60. ^ «Korean alphabet, pronunciation and language». www.omniglot.com. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
  61. ^ Kim-Renaud, Young-Key (2012). Tranter, Nicolas (ed.). The Languages of Japan and Korea. Oxon, UK: Routledge. p. 127. ISBN 9780415462877.
  62. ^ The Japanese/Korean Vowel Correspondences Archived 2 January 2018 at the Wayback Machine by Bjarke Frellesvig and John Whitman. Section 3 deals with Middle Korean vowels.
  63. ^ Korean orthography rules Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine
  64. ^ The Korean language reform of 1446: the origin, background, and Early History of the Korean Alphabet, Gari Keith Ledyard. University of California, 1966, p. 367–368.
  65. ^ Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, The World’s Writing Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 219–220
  66. ^ «Today is a Holiday in Honor of the World’s Most Remarkable Alphabet». mentalfloss.com. 9 October 2017. Retrieved 23 March 2019.
  67. ^ Korea Newsreview. (1988). South Korea: Korea News review Incorporated. Volume 17, Issues 27-53, page 29
  68. ^ Papers of the C.I.C. Far Eastern Language Institute, the University of Michigan, 1968, Indiana University, 1969 [and] the University of Minnesota, 1970. Richard B. Mather, Editor. (1973). United States: Panel on Far Eastern Language Institutes of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
  69. ^ Yergeau, F. (1998). «3. Versions of the standards». UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646. doi:10.17487/rfc2279. RFC 2279.
  70. ^ Ho-Min Sohn (29 March 2001). The Korean Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 48–. ISBN 978-0-521-36943-5.
  71. ^ Iksop Lee; S. Robert Ramsey (2000). The Korean Language. SUNY Press. pp. 315–. ISBN 978-0-7914-4832-8.
  72. ^ Ki-Moon Lee; S. Robert Ramsey (3 March 2011). A History of the Korean Language. Cambridge University Press. pp. 168–. ISBN 978-1-139-49448-9.
  73. ^ Park, ChangHo (2009). Lee, Chungmin; Simpson, Greg B; Kim, Youngjin; Li, Ping (eds.). «Visual processing of Hangul, the Korean script». The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics. III: 379–389. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511596865.030. ISBN 9780511596865 – via Google Books.
  74. ^ Welch, Craig. «Korean Unicode Fonts». www.wazu.jp.
  75. ^ Pratt, Keith L.; Rutt, Richard (13 September 1999). Korea: A Historical and Cultural Dictionary – Keith L. Pratt, Richard Rutt, James Hoare – Google Boeken. ISBN 9780700704637. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
  76. ^ Ezer, Oded (9 December 2006). «Hangul Dada, Seoul, Korea». Flickr. Retrieved 13 April 2012.
  77. ^ Taylor 1980, p. 71.
  78. ^ Taylor 1980, p. 73.
  79. ^ Taylor 1980, p. 70.
  80. ^ a b «Koreana Autumn 2007 (English)». Koreana Autumn 2007 (English). Retrieved 13 October 2021.

References[edit]

  • Chang, Suk-jin (1996). «Scripts and Sounds». Korean. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 978-1-55619-728-4. (Volume 4 of the London Oriental and African Language Library).
  • «Hangeul Matchumbeop». The Ministry of Education of South Korea. 1988.
  • Hannas, W[illia]m C. (1997). Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1892-0.
  • Kim-Renaud, Young-Key, ed. (1997). The Korean Alphabet: Its History and Structure. University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1723-7.
  • Lee, Iksop; Ramsey, Samuel Robert (2000). The Korean Language. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-9130-0.
  • McCune, G[eorge] M.; Reischauer, E[dwin] O. (1939). «The Romanization of the Korean Language: Based upon Its Phonetic Structure» (PDF). Transactions of the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. XXIX: 1–55. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 July 2015. Retrieved 12 August 2015.
  • Sampson, Geoffrey (1990). Writing Systems. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-1756-4.
  • Silva, David J. (2002). «Western attitudes toward the Korean language: An Overview of Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Mission Literature» (PDF). Korean Studies. 26 (2): 270–286. doi:10.1353/ks.2004.0013. hdl:10106/11257. S2CID 55677193.
  • Sohn, Ho-Min (2001). The Korean Language. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-36943-5.
  • Song, Jae Jung (2005). The Korean Language: Structure, Use and Context. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-39082-5.
  • Taylor, Insup (1980). «The Korean writing system: An alphabet? A syllabary? A logography?». In Kolers, P.A.; Wrolstad, M. E.; Bouma, Herman (eds.). Processing of Visual Language. Vol. 2. New York: Plenum Press. ISBN 978-0306405761. OCLC 7099393.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hangul.

  • Korean alphabet and pronunciation by Omniglot
  • Online Hangul tutorial at Langintro.com
  • Hangul table with Audio Slideshow
  • Technical information on Hangul and Unicode
  • Hangul Sound Keyboard at Kmaru.com
  • Learn Hangul at Korean Wiki Project

Дорогие друзья! 

Сегодня наш первый урок корейского языка. Конечно же, мы начнем с алфавита.
Корейская письменность называется Хангыль (한글). Её основателем является Сэ Джон Великий (세종대왕) из династии Ли (кстати, наш предок, его род (бон) Чонджу), до этого использовались китайские иероглифы.

Во времена его правления в Корее наблюдался большой культурный подъем, все эти события происходили в первой половине 15 века.

Итак, начинаем. 

В корейском языке 40 букв, из которых 10 гласных и 11 дифтонгов (то есть сложных
звуков, которые состоят из нескольких гласных). 14 согласных и 5 сдвоенных
согласных, итого в сумме получается 40. Хочу сразу обрадовать тех, кто раньше
думал, что корейская письменность – иероглифическая. Хотя, конечно, чтобы узнать
глубокий смысл слова и происхождения, нужно изучать иероглифы, называемые ханджа
(한자).

Гласные

Дифтонги

 ㅏ— а
 ㅑ— я
 ㅓ— о (произносится, как между «о» и «а»)
 ㅕ— ё
 ㅗ – о (произносится, как между «о» и «у»)
 ㅛ – ё (йо, губы вытянуты, можно сказать губки «бантиком», более
закрытая)
 ㅜ — у
 ㅠ— ю
  — ы
 — и
 — э
 — е
 — э
 — е
  — ва
  — вэ
 -вэ
 — во
 — увэ
 — ви
 — ый
*Хотя в корейском языке нет буквы «в», при произношении дифтонгов, звук
средний, между уэ, и вэ.

Согласные

Сдвоенные согласные

Итак, сегодня мы познакомились с корейским алфавитом. На следующем уроке мы
будем проходить первые слоги и первые слова.

Домашнее задание — написать каждую букву по две строки. И помните, вы делаете это
для себя. Каллиграфия – это искусство ))).
Если есть возможность, прошу сканировать свои д/з и загружать их прикрепленным
файлом.Порядок написания всех букв очень важен и поэтому не поленитесь выучить, как
правильно писать каждую букву, это сослужит вам хорошую службу в будущем, ведь
сами знаете, что привычка – вторая натура, потом тяжело будет исправлять.

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

КУДА ВЫКЛАДЫВАТЬ ДОМАШНЕЕ ЗАДАНИЕ?
Для более эффективного изучения корейского языка, смотрите домашние работы других участников и делитесь своей домашней работой, а более опытные проверят и дадут вам корректирующие советы.
ССЫЛКА НА ТЕМУ: Уроком №1: Алфавит

— — — — — — — — — — — — —

P.S. Прошу учитывать то, что целиком и полностью русской транскрипцией не
передать звучание корейского языка.

© Куротченко К.Б., Леонов М. В.

Алфавит. Правила чтения

В своем современном виде корейский фонетический алфавит Хангыль состоит из сорока букв. Начнем с согласных. Проведите мышкой по букве, чтобы увидеть порядок её написания.

Если ниже вместо букв алфавита вы видите квадратики, то установите шрифт Batang. Архив нужно распаковать в «Панель управления — Шрифты». Перезагрузите страницу. Возможно, стоит перезагрузить компьютер.

— Буква «киёк». Читается как «к» в начале и конце слова, а также на стыке двух глухих согласных. После звонкого согласного или между двумя гласными читается как «г».

— Буква «ниын». Читается как «н». Подсказка

— Буква «тигыт». Читается как «т» в начале и конце слова, а также на стыке двух глухих согласных. После звонкого согласного или между двумя гласными читается как «д».

— Буква «риыль». Читается как «р» в начале слова и между двумя гласными. В конце слова или перед согласным читается как «ль».

— Буква «миым». Читается как «м».

— Буква «пиып». Читается как «п» в начале и конце слова, а также на стыке двух глухих согласных. После звонкого согласного или между двумя гласными читается как «б».

— Буква «сиот». Перед йотированными гласными (и, ё, ю, я) читается шепеляво, как нечто среднее между «сь» и «щ».

— Буква «иын». Читается как носовой н (похоже на английский ng). В начале слога эта буква не читается.

— Буква «чиыт». Читается как «ч» в начале и конце слова, а также на стыке двух глухих согласных. После звонкого согласного или между двумя гласными читается как мягкий «дж».

— Буква «хиыт». Читается как слабый «х».

Теперь перейдем к гласным.

Существует две базовых гласных: (и) и (ы). От них образуются все остальные буквы путем добавления горизонтальных и вертикальных коротких черт. Вот как это выглядит:

— «а» – произносится более открыто, чем русский «а»

— «о» – произносится как звук, средний между русскими «о» и «э»,
чтобы его произнести надо сложить губы как для звука «э», а произнести «о»

— «ё» – произносится как звук, средний между «ё» и «э»
чтобы его произнести надо сложить губы как для звука «э», а произнести «ё»

— «о» – звук, средний между «у» и «о»
чтобы его произнести надо сложить губы как для звука «у», а произнести «о»

— «ё» – звук, средний между «ю» и «ё»
чтобы его произнести надо сложить губы как для звука «у», а произнести «ё»

Однако корейский алфавит имеет одну особенность. Отдельные буквы в нем составляются в слоги. Последние составляются по определенным, весьма несложным правилам:

  1. Согласный + гласный. Если гласный имеет длинную горизонтальную черту, то согласный пишется над ним. Если же длинная черта расположена вертикально, согласный пишется слева.

  2. Согласный + гласный + согласный. В этом случае конечный согласный пишется под гласным.

  3. Гласный + согласный. Слоговой знак не может начинаться с гласного. В том случае, если слог начинается с гласного, на письме перед ним ставится буква , которая в этом случае не читается.

    아, 어, 여, 우, 유

    안, 엄, 열, 욱, 입

Обновите / смените браузер при возникновении проблем с аудио-плеером ниже.

Задание. Напишите и прочитайте следующие слова:

가방 (кабан) «портфель»;

사람 (сарам) «человек»;

사이 (саи) «между»;

(сок) «внутри»;

아버지 (абоджи) «отец»;

어머니 (омони) «мать»;

(чам) «сон»;

(муль) «вода»; Подсказка

하다 (хада) «делать»;

(хак) «журавль»;

강아지 (канъаджи) «щенок»;

고양이 (коянъи) «кошка»;

유리 (юри) «стекло»;

야경 (ягён) «ночной пейзаж»;

우산 (усан) «зонт»;

우물 (умуль) «колодец»;

음악 (ымак) «музыка»;

바람 (парам) «ветер»;

다발 (табаль) «букет»;

듣다 (тытта) «слушать, слышать»;

(ён) «дракон»

Теперь рассмотрим оставшиеся согласные. Они делятся на две группы – придыхательные и глоттализованные. Придыхательных согласных всего четыре.

— Буква «кхиёк». Читается как «к» с легким придыханием. В транскрипции обозначается как «кх»

— Буква «тхиыт». Читается как «т» с легким придыханием. В транскрипции обозначается как «тх»

— Буква «пхиып». Читается как «п» с легким придыханием. В транскрипции обозначается как «пх»

— Буква «чхиыт». Читается как «ч» с легким придыханием. В транскрипции обозначается как «чх»

Глоттализованных согласных пять.

— Буква «ссанъ-киёк». Читается как «кк».

— Буква «ссанъ-тигыт». Читается как «тт».

— Буква «ссанъ-пиып». Читается как «пп».

— Буква «ссанъ-сиот». Читается как «сс».

— Буква «ссанъ-чиыт». Читается как «чч».

Из гласных остались так называемые сложные гласные, которые графически составлены из простых, рассмотренных выше.

ㅏ + ㅣ = — э
ㅓ + ㅣ = — е
ㅑ + ㅣ = — йэ
ㅕ + ㅣ = — йе
ㅗ + ㅣ = ㅚ — вe
ㅜ + ㅣ = ㅟ — ви
ㅗ + ㅏ = ㅘ — ва
ㅜ + ㅓ = ㅝ — во
ㅗ + ㅐ = ㅙ — вэ
ㅜ + ㅔ = ㅞ — ве
ㅡ + ㅣ = ㅢ — ый

Комментарии:

  1. В современном языке разница между и , а также , практически стерлась. Первая пара звуков произносится как «е» в слове «лето», вторая пара произносится как «йе».
  2. В начале дифтонгов «ва», «ве», «ви» и т. д. начальный звук произносится близко к английскому w, но менее огублено.
  3. Буква читается обычно как «ый», но когда в том же слоге ей предшествует согласный, она читается как «и»: 무늬 (муни) «узор», но 강의 (канъый) «лекция» Подсказка, 의사 (ыйса) «врач».

Задание. Напишите и прочитайте следующие слова:

친구 (чхингу) «друг»;

팔다 (пхальда) «продавать»;

(кхаль) «нож»;

(тхаль) «маска»;

깔개 (ккальгэ) «подстилка, циновка»;

따라 (ттара) «следом»;

(тталь) «дочь»;

쓰다 (ссыда) «писать»;

(ссук) «полынь»;

위장 (виджан) «желудок»;

(вон) «вона» (кор. денежная единица);

(ппан) «хлеб»;

(ччак) «пара»;

애인 (эин) «возлюбленный»;

개구리 (кэгури) «лягушка»;

에어컨 (еокхон) «кондиционер»;

예감 (йегам) «предчувствие»;

얘기 (йэги) «рассказ» (сокр. от 이야기);

외우다 (веуда) «учить наизусть»;

(вэ) «почему»;

공원 (конвон) «парк»;

와인 (ваин) «вино»;

왕국 (вангук) «королевство».

Правила чтения

Правил чтения в корейском алфавите немного.

  1. На конце слога читаются следующие согласные: ㄱ,ㄴ,ㄷ,ㅁ,ㅂ,ㅇ,ㄹ. Буквы и читаются как . Буквы и читаются как . Остальные согласные читаются как .
  2. Иногда слог может оканчиваться на две согласных. В этом случае читается только одна из них. Можно выделить три группы чтений.

    В первой группе из двух букв читается только первая. Это происходит в буквосочетаниях ㅄ,ㄽ, ㄾ,ㅀ,ㄳ,ㄵ,ㄶ. При этом если следующий слог начинается с гласного, то читаются обе буквы, за исключением случаев с и , в которых никогда не читается.

    Ко второй группе относятся буквосочетания ㄼ,ㄿ. В них читается первая согласная.

    К третьей группе относятся буквосочетания ㄺ,ㄻ. В них читается только вторая буква: 읽 [익]

  3. Правила чтения буквы . В середине слога после согласной может читаться либо как , либо как . При этом предшествующий согласный часто меняет свое чтение.

    перед или после читается как . При этом читается как «ль».

    В остальных случаях читается как . При этом перед ней и не меняют своего чтения, читается как , читается как , читается как .

    Подробнее с примерами:

    Правила ассимиляции:

    1. ㄱ + ㄹ = ㅇ и ㄴ 폭로 [퐁노] разоблачение

    2. ㄴ + ㄹ = ㄹ и ㄹ 근로자 [글로자] трудящийся Подсказка

    Аналогично ㄹ + ㄴ = ㄹ и ㄹ 설날 [설랄] первый день года (1-е января по лунному календарю)

    3. ㅁ + ㄹ = ㅁ и ㄴ 침략 [침냑] агрессия

    4. ㅂ + ㄹ = ㅁ и ㄴ 압력 [암녁] давление

    5. ㅇ + ㄹ = ㅇ и ㄴ 강령 [강녕] программа, платформа

  4. Буква вместе с последующим произносятся как . Перед произносится как . Перед читается как «дж»: 굳이 (куджи).
  5. Буква перед йотированной гласной читается как : 붙이다 (пучхида) «приклеивать».
  6. Буква перед читается как «р»: 말하다 (мархада) «говорить».
  7. Глухой согласный читается после в конце слога как придыхательный: 파랗다 (пхаратха) «голубой».
  8. (и буквы ㅅㅈㅌㅎㅊㅆ, которые читаются как ) перед ㄹ ㅁ ㄴ читается как . Примеры:

    몇명 [면명] 다섯 명 [다선 명] 넣는 [넌는] 여섯 명 [여선 명] 끝내다 [끈내다]

  9. перед или произносится как .

    перед или произносится как .

Задание. Прочитайте следующие слова:

읽다, 짙다, 닻, 일하다, 빛나다, 박물관, 낳다, 낱낱이, 좋다, 십만, 한국말, 값, 앉다, 싫다, 잃었다, 있는, 첫물, 깎다, 삶, 어떻게, 빨갛다, 숙녀, 식물, 국문, 낫, 맏이, 만났다, 좋지, 꽃, 무릎, 같습니다, 듣습니다, 설날, 신라, 십리, 심리, 옥루몽, 압록강, 싫어, 맑은, 앉아요.

Напишите русскую транскрипцию слов. Сравните с ключом и озвучкой. Подсказка

Ключ

Для вас создана беседа ВКонтакте (нажмите), поэтому не нужно создавать другие беседы, которые продлятся несколько дней и забудутся, эта будет ждать вас всегда.

Изучение корейского языка
Изучение корейского языка: Freepick

Почему так популярен корейский язык? Молодежь изучает его, чтобы понять, о чем поют их любимые k-pop группы, и смотреть дорамы. Старшему поколению интересна история развития языка. Тем, кто стремится познать редкий язык, придется приложить усилия и начать с азов — с алфавита.

История создания корейского алфавита

До XV века базой письменной речи в Корее служили китайские иероглифы (ханча). Подобно тому как латынь была широко распространена в средневековой Европе, так и китайский язык использовался не только в Корее, но и во всей Восточной Азии, включая Японию и Вьетнам. Это создавало ряд проблем:

  • Владели китайским лишь представители интеллектуальной элиты, так как язык был сложным.
  • Устную корейскую речь передавали на письме китайскими иероглифами, что было не всегда удобно.

Для того чтобы устранить несоответствия и развивать грамотность народа, в 1443 году изобрели новую систему письма — алфавит хангыль (hangul).

Новая простая письменность возмутила знать, поэтому на долгие годы хангыль остался лишь в обиходе женщин, детей и бедняков. В XX веке, когда страна освободилась от японской зависимости и начался подъем патриотизма, хангыль получил статус официального алфавита в государстве.

Хангыль — это система фонетического письма, которая состоит из согласных и гласных букв. В отличие от других подобных систем, эта была специально разработана для объединения согласных и гласных букв в слоговые единицы. В связи с этим можно сказать, что алфавит перекликается со слоговыми системами письма.

Раскрытая книга, из которой вылетают буквы

Изучение языков: Pixabay

Сегодня хангыль насчитывает 40 букв. Традиционно для упрощения изучения их делят на 4 группы:

  • Простые гласные.
  • Простые согласные.
  • Дифтонги (сложные гласные, в основе которых две и более гласных).
  • Удвоенные согласные.

Основные гласные и согласные корейского алфавита просты для понимания. Любой язык содержит их аналоги. С дифтонгами иногда возникают трудности. Для их преодоления рекомендуется делать упражнения для развития артикуляции, а также слушать язык носителей (подойдут любимые песни и фильмы с субтитрами).

Корейский алфавит: гласные

Рассмотрим непосредственно корейские буквы. Начнем с простых гласных. Все буквы алфавита пишут и читают сверху вниз и слева направо.

ㅏ — подобно европейским алфавитам, в корейском началом служит буква «А».

ㅑ — ее мягкая пара, «Я» (йя).

ㅓ— пишется зеркально «А», буква «ОЭ», горловой звук, формируется из горла, без действий мышц лица.

ㅕ— мягкая пара, «ЙОЭ».

ㅣ— «И» (легко запомнить: пишется как «I» латиницы).

ㅡ — твердая пара предыдущей, «Ы».

ㅗ — «О», губы сильнее, чем обычно вытянуты вперед.

ㅛ — ее мягкая пара, «Ё» (йо).

ㅜ — «У», аналогична стандартной, пишется зеркально «О».

ㅠ — ее мягкая пара, «Ю» (йу)

Далее в корейском алфавите идут дифтонги, составные буквы.

ㅐ — состоит из «а» и «и», произносится «Э».

ㅒ — у дифтонгов также есть мягкие пары. Этот состоит из «я» и «и», произносится «Е» (йэ).

ㅔ — сочетание горловой «оэ» и «и», произносится «Э».

ㅖ — сочетание «йоэ» и «и», произносится «Е» (йэ).

Эти две пары аналогичны друг другу по произношению, но различны грамматически.

ㅘ — сочетание «о» и «а», произносится упруго «УА».

ㅙ — сочетание «о» и «э», произносится «УЭ».

ㅚ — сочетание «о» и «и», произносится аналогично предыдущей «УЭ».

ㅝ — сочетание «у» и «оэ», произносится «УО».

ㅞ — сочетание «у» и «э», произносится «УЭ», аналогично ㅚ.

ㅟ — сочетание «у» и «и», произносится «УИ».

ㅢ — сочетание «ы» и «и», произносится «ЫИ».

Жителям Казахстана с легкостью дадутся горловые гласные корейского алфавита после изучения казахского с глубокими гласными (например, «Ы»).

Основные гласные и согласные корейского языка

Основные гласные и согласные корейского языка: Korean.go.kr

Корейский алфавит: согласные

ㄱ — «К», произносится с придыханием.

ㄴ — «Н».

ㄷ — «Т», с придыханием.

ㄹ — «Р».

ㅁ — «М».

ㅂ — «П», с придыханием.

ㅅ — «С», с придыханием.

ㅇ — «инн», не произносится, всегда пишется с гласной для обозначения в слоге ее звука.

ㅈ — «ТЬ».

ㅊ — «ЦЬ», поверхностная.

ㅋ — «КХ», с большим придыханием.

ㅌ — «ТХ», с большим придыханием.

ㅍ — «ПХ», с большим придыханием.

ㅎ — «Х», с большим придыханием.

Остались в корейском алфавите двойные согласные:

ㄲ — «КК».

ㄸ — «ТТ».

ㅃ — «ПП».

ㅆ — «СС».

ㅉ — «ЦЦ».

Двойные гласные и согласные корейского языка

Двойные гласные и согласные корейского языка: Korean.go.kr

На письме буквы корейского алфавита никогда не пишутся по одной, всегда формируются слоги. Специально для этого была изобретена таблица хангыля — кагяпхё, в которой обозначены все соединения гласных и согласных.

Вот и познакомились с корейским алфавитом хангыль. После недели тренировок самые добросовестные смогут читать простые тексты самостоятельно. Следующий важный этап — грамматика корейского языка. Какие впечатления от хангыля? Делитесь в комментариях, почему хотите выучить корейский язык.

Оригинал статьи: https://www.nur.kz/leisure/interesting-facts/1833907-korejskij-alfavit-napisanie-pravila-ctenia-tablica/

Перейти к содержимому

Гласные

Буквы Звучание Разъяснения и рекомендации
1

«а»

произносится более открыто, чем русский «а»
2

«я»

3

«о»

произносится как звук, средний между русскими «о» и «э»
4

«ё»

произносится как звук, средний между «ё» и «э»
5

«о»

звук, средний между «у» и «о»
6

«ё»

звук, средний между «ю» и «ё»
7

«у»

8

«ю»

Согласные

Буквы Звучание Разъяснения и рекомендации
1

«киёк»

Читается как «к» в начале и конце слова, а также на стыке двух глухих согласных. После звонкого согласного или между двумя гласными читается как «г»
2

«ниын»

Читается как «н»
3

«тигыт»

Читается как «т» в начале и конце слова, а также на стыке двух глухих согласных. После звонкого согласного или между двумя гласными читается как «д»
4

«риыль»

Читается как «р» в начале слова и между двумя гласными. В конце слова или перед согласным читается как «ль».
5

«миым»

Читается как «м»
6

«пиып»

Читается как «п» в начале и конце слова, а также на стыке двух глухих согласных. После звонкого согласного или между двумя гласными читается как «б»
7

«сиот»

Перед йотированными гласными (и, ё, ю, я) читается шепеляво, как нечто среднее между «сь» и «щ»
8

«иын»

Читается как носовой “н” (похоже на английский ng). В начале слога эта буква не читается.
9

«чиыт»

Читается как «ч» в начале и конце слова, а также на стыке двух глухих согласных. После звонкого согласного или между двумя гласными читается как мягкий «дж»
10

«хиыт»

Читается как слабый «х»

Теперь рассмотрим оставшиеся согласные. Они делятся на две группы –придыхательные и сдвоенные.

Придыхательных согласных всего четыре:

Буквы Звучание Разъяснения и рекомендации
1

«кхиёк»

Читается как «к» с легким придыханием. В транскрипции обозначается как «кх»
2

«тхиыт»

Читается как «т» с легким придыханием. В транскрипции обозначается как «тх»
3

«пхиып»

Читается как «п» с легким придыханием. В транскрипции обозначается как «пх»
4

«чхиыт»

Читается как «ч» с легким придыханием. В транскрипции обозначается как «чх»

Сдвоенных согласных пять:

Буквы Звучание

Разъяснения и рекомендации

1

«ссанъ-киёк»

Читается как «кк»
2

«ссанъ-тигыт»

Читается как «тт»
3

«ссанъ-пиып»

Читается как «пп»
4

«ссанъ-сиот»

Читается как «сс»
5

«ссанъ-чиыт»

Читается как «чч»

Из гласных остались так называемые сложные гласные, которые графически составлены из простых, рассмотренных ранее.

Буквы Звучание Разъяснения и рекомендации
1

«э»

2

«е»

3

«йэ»

4

«йе»

5

«вэ»

6

«ви»

7

«ва»

8

«во»

9

«вэ»

10

«ве»

11

«ый»/»и»

«ый»– читается в начале слова,

«и» — читается в конце слова.

В современном языке разница между и , а также , практически стерлась. Первая пара звуков произносится как «е» в слове «лето», вторая пара произносится как «йе».

В начале дифтонгов «ва», «ве», «ви» и т. д. начальный звук произносится близко к английскому w, но менее огублено.

Буква читается обычно как «ый», но когда в том же слоге ей предшествует согласный, она читается как «и»: 무늬 (муни) «узор», но 강의 (канъый) «лекция», 의사 (ыйса) «врач».

Написание:  При написании лучше соблюдать правила сверху вниз, слева направо.

04                                      03

  • Как пишется будь то в устной или письменной форме
  • Как пишется будь ласка
  • Как пишется будущий муж или будующий муж
  • Как пишется будущий водитель
  • Как пишется будущие первоклассники