Hangul

Hangul
Korean name
Hangul:	한글
Hanja:	(none)
Revised Romanization:	Han(-)geul
McCune-Reischauer:	Han'gŭl

io:Template:Koreanname Hangul (한글) is the native Alphabet used to write the Korean language, as opposed to the Hanja system borrowed from China. For other Romanized spellings of "Hangul", please see below.

While Hangul may appear logographic to the uninitiated, it is actually phonemic. Each Hangul syllabic block consists of at least two of the 24 alphabetic letters (): 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Historically, the alphabet had several more consonants and vowels. (See .) For a phonological description of the letters, see Phonology.

Names

Official names

• The modern name Hangul (한글) is a term coined by Ju Si-gyeong in 1912 that simultaneously means great script in archaic Korean and Korean script in modern Korean. It cannot be written in Hanja, though the first syllable, Han (한), if used in the sense of the word Korean, may be written 韓. It is pronounced [hangɯl] (IPA), and has been Romanized in the following ways:
  • Hangeul or Han-geul in the Revised Romanization of Korean, which the South Korean government uses in all English publications and encourages for all purposes. Many recent publications have adopted this spelling.
  • Han'gŭl in McCune-Reischauer. When used as an English word, it is often rendered without the diacritics: Hangul, or sometimes without capitalization: hangul. This is how it appears in many English dictionaries.
  • Hankul in Yale Romanization, another common spelling in English dictionaries.
• The original name was Hunmin Jeong-eum (see )
• North Koreans prefer to call it Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글), for reasons related to the different Names of Korea.

Other names

• Jeong-eum, short for the official Hunmin Jeong-eum (훈민정음; 訓民正音). (See )
• Urigeul (우리글 "our script") is used in both the North and South, but not by non-Koreans.

Until the early twentieth century, Hangul was often denigrated by those who preferred the traditional Hanja writing. They gave it names such as:

• Eonmun (언문 諺文 "vernacular script").
• Amkeul (암클 "women's script"). 암-(probably derived from 陰) is a prefix that signifies a noun is feminine.
• Ahaegeul (아해글 "children's script").

History

The system was completed in 1443 or January 1444, and published in 1446 in a document entitled Hunmin Jeong-eum, after which the alphabet was named. The publication date of Hunmin jeong-eum, October 9, is Hangul Day in South Korea. Its North Korean equivalent is on January 15.

An old legend holds that King Sejong visualized the written characters after studying an intricate lattice, but this speculation was put to rest by the discovery in 1940 of the 1446 Hunmin Jeongeum Haerye (Explanations and Examples of Hunmin jeong-eum). This document details the rationale for the letter designs. (See .)

King Sejong explained that he created the new script because the Chinese characters used to write Korean speech were inaccurate and difficult to learn for the common people. (Hence the name Hunmin Jeong-eum, which means "Correct Sounds for the Education of the People" in Sino-Korean). At that time, only male members of the aristocracy (Yangban) learned to read and write Hanja. Since written material was only available in Hanja, most Koreans were effectively illiterate. Hangul faced heavy opposition by the literate elite, who believed Hanja to be the only legitimate writing system. The protest by Choe Man-ri and other Confucians in 1444 is a typical example.

Later the government became apathetic to Hangul. Yeonsan-gun, the 10th king, forbade the study or use of Hangul and banned Hangul documents in 1504, and King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun in 1506. Until this time Hangul had been used by women and the uneducated.

In late 19th century, Korean nationalism increased as Japan attempted to sever Korea from China's sphere of influence. Hangul began to be considered as a national symbol by some reformists. As a result of the Gab-o Reform (갑오 개혁) by pro-Japanese politicians, Hangul was adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894. After Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, Hangul was briefly taught in schools, but later banned as Japan enforced a cultural assimilation policy.

Jamo

There are 51 jamo, of which 24 are equivalents to letters of the Roman alphabet. The other 27 are clusters of two or sometimes three jamo. Of the 24 simple jamo, fourteen are consonants (ja-eum 자음, 子音: literally "child sounds") and ten are vowels (mo-eum 모음, 母音: literally "mother sounds"). Five of the simple consonants are doubled to form the five tense consonants (see below), while another eleven clusters are formed of two different consonants. The ten vowel jamo can be combined to form eleven diphthongs. Here is a summary:

• 14 simple consonants: ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂㅅㅇㅈㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ, plus obsolete ㅿㆁㆆㅱㅸㆄ
• 5 double consonants: ㄲㄸㅃㅆㅉ, plus obsolete ㅥㆀㆅㅹ
• 11 consonant clusters: ㄳㄵㄶㄺㄻㄼㄽㄾㄿㅀㅄ, plus obsolete ㅦㅧㅨㅪㅬㅭㅮㅯㅰㅲㅳㅶㅷㅺㅻㅼㅽㅾㆂㆃ, and obsolete triple clusters ㅩㅫㅴㅵ

• 6 simple vowels: ㅏㅓㅗㅜㅡㅣ, plus obsolete ㆍ
• 4 yotized simple vowels: ㅑㅕㅛㅠ
• 11 diphthongs: ㅐㅒㅔㅖㅘㅙㅚㅝㅞㅟㅢ, plus obsolete ㆎㆇㆈㆉㆊㆋㆌ

Four of the simple vowel jamo are derived, with a short stroke that signifies yotization (a preceding y): ㅑ ya, ㅕ yeo, ㅛ yo, and ㅠ yu. These four are counted as part of the 24 simple jamo because the yotizing stroke taken out of context does not represent y. In fact, there is no separate jamo for y.

Of the simple consonants, ㅊ chieut, ㅋ kieuk, ㅌ tieut, and ㅍ pieup are aspirated derivatives of ㅈ jieut, ㄱ giyeok, ㄷ digeut, and ㅂ bieup, respectively, formed by combining the parent consonant with an extra stroke representing Aspiration.

The doubled consonants consist of two identical consonants placed beside each other horizontally. They are: ㄲ ssang-giyeok (kk: ssang- 쌍 "double"), ㄸ ssang-digeut (tt), ㅃ ssang-bieup (pp), ㅆ ssang-siot (ss), and ㅉ ssang-jieut (jj). Double jamo do not represent geminate consonants, but instead are tense.

The sounds represented by the single and double consonantal jamo cannot be pronounced alone in normal speech.

There are three formal categories of jamo:

1. Initial (초성, 初聲 choseong): The Syllable onset of Consonant(s) before the Vowel(s). These include all five doubled jamo. The lack of an initial is indicated by the silent placeholder jamo ㅇ.
2. * Position: Placed at the top, left, or upper-left corner of the syllabic block.
3. * See: Hangul consonant and vowel tables
4. Medial (중성, 中聲 jungseong): The vowels comprising the Syllable nucleus.
5. * Position: The middle of the syllable block if there's a final, otherwise at the right or bottom.
6. : For a list of the medials, see
7. Final (종성, 終聲 jongseong): The Syllable coda of Consonant(s) after the Vowel(s). All basic jamo can occur as finals, and the silent initial ㅇ is pronounced ng in final position. However, the only doubled jamo that can occur finally are ㅆ (ss) and ㄲ (kk).
8. * Position: Placed at the bottom, right or lower-right corner of the block.
9. * See: Hangul consonant and vowel tables

Jamo design

For instance, the jamo ㅌ t is composed of three strokes, each one meaningful: the top stroke indicates it is a plosive, like ㆆ ’, ㄱ g, ㄷ d, ㅂ b, ㅈ j, which have the same stroke (the last is affricative, a plosive-fricative sequence); the middle stroke indicates that it is aspirated, like ㅎ h, ㅋ k, ㅍ p, ㅊ ch, which also have this stroke; and the curved bottom stroke indicates that it's coronal, like ㄴ n, ㄷ d, ㄹ l. Two consonants, ᇰ and ᇢ, have dual pronunciations, and may be composed of two elements to represent these ([ŋ]/silent and [m]/[w], respectively).

With vowel jamo, what was originally a dot (now a short connected line) indicates that it may be yotized; this dot is then doubled to indicate actual yotization (y-). The position of the dot indicates which harmonic class the vowel belongs to ('light' or 'dark'). In the modern jamo, an additional vertical stroke indicates Umlaut, deriving ㅐ [ε], ㅔ , ㅚ , ㅟ from ㅏ , ㅓ , ㅗ , ㅜ . However, this is not part of the intentional design of the script, but rather a natural development from what were originally diphthongs ending in the vowel ㅣ. (e.g. ㅐ ', ㅚ ', etc.) Indeed, in many Korean dialects, including the standard dialect of Seoul, some of these may still be diphthongs.

Although the design of the script may be featural, for all practical purposes it behaves as an alphabet. The jamo ㅌ isn't read as three letters coronal plosive aspirated, for instance, but as a single consonant t. Likewise, the former diphthong ㅔ is read as an independent vowel e.

Beside the jamo, Hangul originally employed diacritic marks to indicate Pitch accent. A syllable with a high pitch was marked with a dot (·) to the left of it (when writing vertically); a syllable with a rising pitch was marked with a double dot, like a colon (:). These are no longer used. However, although Vowel length is phonemic in Korean, it was never indicated in Hangul, except that syllables with rising pitch necessarily have long vowels.

Although some aspects of Hangul are shared with Phagspa (and thus Indic phonology), such as the relationships among the homorganic jamo and the alphabetic principle itself, other aspects are shared with Chinese writing, such as syllablic blocks and the basic consonants. Tenuis (non-voiced, non-aspirated) plosives, g for ㄱ , d for ㄷ , and b for ㅂ were considered basic in Chinese, but not Indic languages; as well as the sibilant s for ㅈ and the liquid l for ㄹ . (Korean ㅈ was pronounced in the 15^th century.)

The Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye explains the designs and derivations of the consonants according to Articulatory phonetics; and the vowels according to the principles of yin and yang and Vowel harmony.

Consonant jamo design

The Korean names for the groups are the traditional Sino-Korean phonetic terminology.

• Velar consonants (아음, 牙音 a-eum: "molar sounds"):
  • ㄱ g , ㅋ k
  • Basic shape: ㄱ is a side view of the back of the tongue raised toward the velum (soft palate). (For illustration, access the external link below.) The ㅋ is derived from ㄱ, with an extra stroke for the burst of aspiration.
• Coronal consonants (설음, 舌音 seol-eum: "lingual sounds"):
  • ㄴ n , ㄷ d , ㅌ t , ㄹ r/l
  • Basic shape: ㄴ is a side view of the tip of the tongue raised toward the Alveolar ridge (gum ridge). The letters derived from ㄴ are pronounced with the same basic articulation. The line topping ㄷ represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The middle stroke of ㅌ represents the burst of aspiration. The top of ㄹ represents a flap of the tongue.
• Bilabial consonants (순음, 唇音 sun-eum: "labial sounds"):
  • ㅁ m , ㅂ b , ㅍ p
  • Basic shape: ㅁ represents the outline of the lips in contact with each other. The top of ㅂ represents the release burst of the b. The top stroke of ㅍ is for the burst of aspiration.
• Sibilants (치음, 齒音 chieum: "dental sounds"):
  • ㅅ s , ㅈ j , ㅊ ch
  • Basic shape: ㅅ was originally shaped like a wedge ʌ, without the Serif on top. It represents a side view of the teeth. The line topping ㅈ represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The stroke topping ㅊ represents an additional burst of aspiration.
• Glottal consonants (후음, 喉音 hueum: "throat sounds"):
  • ㅇ ng , ㅎ h
  • Basic shape: ㅇ is an outline of the throat. Originally ㅇ was two letters, a simple circle for silence (null consonant), and a circle topped by a verticle line, ㆁ, for the nasal ng. A now obsolete letter, ㆆ, represented a glottal stop, which is pronounced in the throat and had closure represented by the top line, like ㄱㄷㅈ. Derived from ㆆ is ㅎ, in which the extra stroke represents a burst of aspiration.

The phonetic theory inherent in the derivation of glottal stop ㆆ and aspirate ㅎ from the null ㅇis more accurate than modern IPA usage. In the IPA, the glottal consonants are posited as having a specific "glottal" place of articulation. However, recent phonetic theory has come to view the glottal stop and [h] to be isolated features of 'stop' and 'aspiration' without a true place of articulation, just as their hangul representations based on the null symbol assume.

Vowel jamo design

• 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 two.

Dots (now short lines) are added to these three basic elements to derive the other simple vowel jamo.

• Simple vowels
  • Horizontal letters: these are mid-high back vowels.
    • ㅗ o
    • ㅜ u
    • ㅡ eu (ŭ)
  • Vertical letters: these were once low or front vowels. (ㅓ eo has since migrated to the back of the mouth.)
    • ㅏ a
    • ㅓ eo (ŏ)
    • ㅣ i
• Compound jamo. Hangul never had a w, except for Sino-Korean Etymology. Since an o or u before an a or eo became a sound, which occurred nowhere else, could always be analyzed as a phonemic o or u, and no letter for was needed. However, vowel harmony must be observed: yin ㅜ with yin ㅓ; yang ㅏ with yang ㅗ. The compound jamo ending in ㅣ i, on the other hand, were originally diphthongs. However, several have since evolved into pure vowels.
  • ㅐ = ㅏ + ㅣ
  • ㅔ = ㅓ + ㅣ
  • ㅘ = ㅗ + ㅏ
  • ㅙ = ㅗ + ㅏ + ㅣ
  • ㅚ = ㅗ + ㅣ
  • ㅝ = ㅜ + ㅓ
  • ㅞ = ㅜ + ㅓ + ㅣ
  • ㅟ = ㅜ + ㅣ
  • ㅢ = ㅡ + ㅣ
• Yotized vowels: There is no jamo for Roman y-. Instead, this sound is indicated by doubling the stroke attached to the base line.
  • ㅑ = ㅏ + a stroke
  • ㅕ = ㅓ + a stroke
  • ㅛ = ㅗ + a stroke
  • ㅠ = ㅜ + a stroke
  • ㅒ = ㅐ + a stroke
  • ㅖ = ㅔ + a stroke

Two methods were used to organize and classify these vowels, Vowel harmony and yotization.

Of the seven vowels, four could be preceded by a y- sound ("yotized"). These four were written as a dot next to a line: ㅓㅏㅜㅗ. (Through the influence of Chinese calligraphy, the dots soon became connected to the line, as seen here.) Yotization was then indicated by doubling this dot: ㅕㅑㅠㅛ. The three vowels which could not be yotized were written with a single stroke: ㅡㆍㅣ.

The Korean language of this period had vowel harmony to a greater extent than it does today. Vowels alternated according to their environment, and fell into "harmonic" groups. This affected the morphology of the language, and Korean phonology described it in terms of yin and yang: If a word had yang ('bright') vowels, then most suffixes also had to have a yang vowel; and conversely, if the root had yin ('dark') vowels, the suffixes needed to be yin as well. There was a harmonic third group called "mediating" ('neutral' in Western terminology) that could coexist with either yin or yang vowels.

The Korean neutral vowel was ㅣ i. The yin vowels were ㅡㅜㅓ eu, u, eo; the dots are in the yin directions of 'down' and 'left'. The yang vowels were ㆍㅗㅏ, ə, o, a, with the dots in the yang directions of 'up' and 'right'. As mentioned above, the Hunmin Jeong-eum states that the shapes of the non-dotted jamo ㅡㆍㅣ were also chosen to represent the concepts of yin, yang, and mediation. (The dot ㆍ ə is now obsolete.)

There was yet a third parameter for designing the vowel jamo: namely, choosing ㅡ as the graphic base of ㅜ and ㅗ, and ㅣ as the base of ㅓ and ㅏ. A full understanding of what these horizontal and vertical groups had in common would require knowing the exact sound values these vowels had in the 15^th century. Our uncertainty is primarily with the jamo ㆍㅓㅏ. Some linguists reconstruct these as , respectively; others as . However, the horizontal jamo ㅡㅜㅗ do appear to have all been mid to high back vowels, .

Ledyard's theory of consonant jamo design

There are several theories on what sources may have inspired King Sejong's creation of Hangul. Although none have wide acceptance, Professor Gari Ledyard of Columbia University believes that five consonants were derived from the Mongol Phagspa alphabet of the Yuan Dynasty, and the rest derived internally, essentially as described in the Hunmin Jeong-eum. However, these basic consonants were not the graphically simplest letters of the Hunmin Jeong-eum, but the basic consonants in Chinese phonology.

The Hunmin Jeong-eum states that King Sejong adapted 古篆 "Gǔ script(s)" in creating hangul. The primary meaning of 古 is old, frustrating philologists because hangul bears no functional similarity to Chinese 篆字 seal scripts. However, 古 may also have been a pun on Mongol (蒙古 Měng-gǔ), and 古篆 may have been an abbreviation of 蒙古篆字 "Mongol Seal Script", that is, a formal variant of the Phagspa alphabet written to look like the Chinese seal script. There were certainly Phagspa manuscripts in the Korean palace library, 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 Yuan dynasty, and of the literati's contempt for the Mongols as "barbarians".

According to Ledyard, the five borrowed letters were graphically simplified, which allowed for jamo clusters and left room to derive the aspirate plosives, ㅋㅌㅍㅊ. But in contrast to the traditional account, the non-plosives (ng ㄴㅁ and ㅅ) were derived by removing the top of these letters. While it's easy to derive ㅁ from ㅂ by removing the top, it's not clear how to derive ㅂ from ㅁ, since ㅂ is not analogous to the other plosives.

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

Additionally, the composition of obsolete ᇢᇦᇴ w, v, f (for Chinese initials 微非敷), by adding a small circle under ㅁㅂㅍ (m, b, p), is parallel to the Phagspa addition of a small loop under three variants of h. In Phagspa, this loop also represented w after vowels. The Chinese initial 微 represented either m or w in various dialects, and this may be reflected in the choice of ㅁ [m] plus ㅇ (from Phagspa [w]) as the elements of hangul ᇢ, for another letter composed of two elements to represent two regional pronunciations.

Finally, most of the borrowed hangul letters were simple geometric shapes, at least originally, but ㄷ d [t] always had a small lip protruding from the upper left corner, just as the Phagspa d [t] did. This can be traced back to the Tibetan letter d, ད.

See Gari Ledyard for details.

Jamo order

The modern alphabetic order was set by Choi Sejin in 1527. This was before the development of the Korean tense consonants and the double jamo that represent them. The conflation of the two letters ㅇ and ㆁ also occurred after the alphabetic order was set. Therefore, when the South Korean and North Korean governments implemented full use of Hangul, they ordered these letters differently, with South Korean grouping similar letters together, and North Korea placing the new letters at the end.

South Korean order

ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ

Double consonantal jamo are placed immediately after the simple jamo they are based on. No distinction is made between silent and nasal ㅇ.

The order of the vocalic jamo is:

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: first added i, then yotized, then yotized with added i. Diphthongs beginning with w- are ordered according to their spelling as ㅏ or ㅓ plus a second vowel, not as separate digraphs.

North Korean order

The modern order of the consonantal jamo is:

(null) ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ (null-ㅇ)

The first ㅇ is the nasal ㅇ ng, which occures in the final in the modern language. ㅇ used at the initial, on the other hand, goes after ㅉ, because it is a placeholder. A letter with no final consonant goes right before that letter with ㄱ at the final, however.

Note that the "new" letters, the double jamo, are placed at the very end of the alphabet, just before the null ㅇ, so as not to alter the traditional order of the rest of the alphabet.

The order of the vocalic jamo is:

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 ㅐ and ㅔ, are placed after all basic vowels, again maintaining Choi's alphabetic order.

Jamo names

Consonantal jamo names

Letter \	South Korean Name \	North Korean name
ㄱ	giyeok (기역)	gieuk (기윽)
ㄴ	nieun (니은)
ㄷ	digeut (디귿)	dieut (디읃)
ㄹ	rieul (리을)
ㅁ	mieum (미음)
ㅂ	bieup (비읍)
ㅅ	siot (시옷)	sieut (시읏)
ㅇ	ieung (이응)
ㅈ	jieut (지읒)
ㅊ	chieut (치읓)
ㅋ	kieuk (키읔)
ㅌ	tieut (티읕)
ㅍ	pieup (피읖)
ㅎ	hieut (히읗)

All jamo in North Korea, and all but three in the more traditional nomenclature used in South Korea, have names of the format of letter + i + eu + letter. For example, Choi wrote bieup with the hanja 非 (bi) 邑 (eup). The names of g, d, and s are exceptions because there are no hanja for euk, eut, and eus. 役 yeok is used in place of euk. Since there is no hanja that ends in t or s, Choi chose two hanja to be read in their Korean gloss, 末 kkeut ("end") and 衣 os ("clothes").

Originally, Choi gave j, ch, k, t, p, and h the irregular one-syllable names of ji, chi, ki, ti, pi, and hi, because they should not be used as final consonants, as specified in Hunmin jeong-eum. But after the establishment of the new orthography in 1933, which allowed all consonsants to be placed as the final consonants, the names were changed to the present forms.

The double jamo precede the parent consonant's name with the word 쌍 ssang, meaning "twin" or "double", or with 된 doen in North Korea, meaning "strong". Thus:

Letter \	South Korean Name \	North Korean name
ㄲ	ssanggiyeok (쌍기역)	doengieuk (된기윽)
ㄸ	ssangdigeut (쌍디귿)	doendieut (된디읃)
ㅃ	ssangbieup (쌍비읍)	doenbieup (된비읍)
ㅆ	ssangsiot (쌍시옷)	doensieut (된시읏)
ㅉ	ssangjieut (쌍지읒)	doenjieut (된지읒)

In North Korea, an alternate way to refer to the jamo is by the name letter + eu (ㅡ), for example, 그 geu for the jamo ㄱ, 쓰 sseu for the jamo ㅆ, etc.

Vocalic jamo names

Letter \	Name
ㅏ	a (아)
ㅐ	ae (애)
ㅑ	ya (야)
ㅒ	yae (얘)
ㅓ	eo (어)
ㅔ	e (에)
ㅕ	yeo (여)
ㅖ	ye (예)
ㅗ	o (오)
ㅘ	wa (와)
ㅙ	wae (왜)
ㅚ	oe (외)
ㅛ	yo (요)
ㅜ	u (우)
ㅝ	wo (워)
ㅞ	we (웨)
ㅟ	wi (위)
ㅠ	yu (유)
ㅡ	eu (으)
ㅢ	ui (의)
ㅣ	i (이)

Obsolete jamo

• ㆍ or 丶 ə (arae-a 아래아 "lower a"): Pronounced as IPA , similar to modern eo.
• :Ə formed a medial of its own, or was found as the diphthong ㆎ area-ae. The word ahə ("child"), which was originally written using this letter, has been changed to ai (아이).
• ㅿ z (bansios 반시옷): A rather unusual sound, perhaps IPA (a nasalized palatal fricative). (If your browser doesn't show it, the jamo looks like an equilateral triangle.)
• ㆆ ’ (yeorin-hieuh 여린히읗 "light hieuh" or doen-ieung 된이응 "strong ieung"): A Glottal stop, "lighter than ㅎ and harsher than ㅇ".
• ㆁ ng (yet-ieung 옛이응): The original jamo for ; now conflated with ㅇ ieung. (With some computer fonts, yet-ieung is shown as a flattened version of ieung, but the correct form is with a long peak, longer than what you would see on a Serif version of ieung.)
• ㅸ β (gabyeoun-bieup 가벼운비읍): IPA . This letter appears to be a digraph of bieup and ieung, but it may be more complicated than that. There were three other less common jamo for sounds in this section of the Chinese rhyme tables, ᇢ w (IPA [w] or [m]), a theoretical ᇴ f, and ㅹ ff .

There were two other now-obsolete double jamo,

• ㆅ x (ssanghieuh 쌍히읗 "double hieuh"): IPA or .
• ㆀ (ssang-ieung 쌍이응 "double ieung"): Another jamo used to represent the rime tables.

In the original Hangul system, double jamo were used to represent the "muddy" (murmured) Chinese consonants, and were not used for Korean. It was only later that a similar convention was used to represent the modern "tense" consonants.)

The sibilant ("dental") consonants were modified to represent the two series of Chinese sibilants, alveolar and retroflex, a "round vs. sharp" distinction which was never made in Korean, and which was even being lost from northern Chinese. The alveolar jamo had longer left stems, while retroflexes had longer right stems:

Original consonants	ㅅ	ㅆ	ㅈ	ㅉ	ㅊ
Chidu-eum (alveolar sibilant)	ᄼ	ᄽ	ᅎ	ᅏ	ᅔ
Jeongchi-eum (retroflex sibilant)	ᄾ	ᄿ	ᅐ	ᅑ	ᅕ

There were also consonant clusters that have since dropped out of the language, such as ㅴ bsg and ㅵ bsd, as well as diphthongs that were only used to represent Chinese medials, such as ㆇ, ㆈ, ㆊ, ㆋ.

Some of the sounds represented by these jamo for "obsolete" Korean (as opposed to for Chinese) still exist in some dialects of Korean.

Syllabic blocks

The null initial was originally just that, null, but since it was only used in initial position, and the consonant ng was silent when initial as well as having a similar shape to the null character, the two came to be seen as the same letter.

Syllabic blocks may be composed of two or three jamo:

1. Two jamo: an initial (a consonant or Consonant cluster, or the null ㅇ) + a medial (a vowel or Diphthong)
2. Three jamo: an initial + a medial + a final (a consonant or consonant cluster)

The placement, or "stacking", of jamo in the block follows set patterns:

1. The components of a complex jamo are written left to right. The most complex are two: ㅄ, ㅝ, etc. (Obsolete combinations are more complex: ㅵ, ㆋ, etc.)
2. All modern Hangul vowels have either a vertical or horizontal axis.
3. *Vertical vowel jamo are written to the right of the initial: ㅣ i.
4. *Horizontal vowel jamo are written under the initial: ㅡ eu.
5. *When a vowel jamo has both horizontal and vertical components, it wraps around the intitial from the bottom to the right: ㅢ ui.
6. A final jamo, if there is one, is added at the bottom. This is called 받침 batchim "supporting floor".
7. Blocks are always written in phonetic order, initial-medial-final. Therefore,
8. *Syllables with a horizontal vowel jamo are written downward: 읍 eup.
9. *Syllables with a vertical vowel jamo and simple final are written clockwise: 쌍 ssang.
10. *Syllables with a wrapping vowel jamo switch direction (down-right-down): 된 doen.
11. *Syllables with a complex final are written left to right at the bottom: 밟 balp.

The resulting block is written within a rectangle of the same size and shape as a Hanja, so to a naive eye syllabic blocks may be confused with hanja.

Not including obsolete jamo, there are some 11,571 possible Hangul blocks.

There was a very minor movement in the twentieth century to abolish syllabic blocks and write the jamo individually and in a row, in the fashion of the Western alphabets: ㄱㅡㄷ geut. However, the blocks make Hangul very efficient to read, as each syllable has a unique shape. Now that Hangul orthography is morphophonemic (see below), this means that Hangul words have easily recognizable shapes. This is a great help to the reader; a similar word-recognition advantage has kept the Semitic abjads vowel-free for millennia. Indeed, people raised reading Chinese or Korean often report that reading the strings of letters in an alphabet like English is like trying to read Morse Code, and the Korean linear writing movement has never gained much support.

Orthography

• Pronunciation and translation:

a person who cannot do it

• Phonemic orthography:

모타는사라미

• Morphophonemic orthography:

못하는사람이

	못-하-는	사람-이
	mos-ha-neun	saram-i
	cannot-do-[modifier]	person-[subject]

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

The Japanese Government-General of Chosen established the writing style of a mixture of Hanja and Hangul, as in the Japanese writing system. The government revised the spelling rules in 1912, 1921 and 1930, which were relatively phonemic.

The Hangul Society, originally 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 Hangul orthography is the called the Hangeul machumbeop, whose last South Korean revision was published in 1988 by the Ministry of Education.

Mixed scripts

Arabic numerals are also mixed in with hangul, as in 2005년 7월 5일 (5 July, 2005).

The Latin alphabet, and occasionally other alphabets, may be sprinkled within Korean texts for illustrative purposes, or for unassimilated loanwords.

Style

In Hunmin Jeong-eum, Hangul was printed in sans-serif angular lines of even thickness. This style is found in books published before about 1900, and can be found today in stone carvings (on statues, for example).

Over the centuries, an ink-brush style of Calligraphy developed, employing the same style of lines and angles as Chinese calligraphy. This brush style is called myeongjo (Chinese míng cháo, Japanese minchō), and is used today in books, newspapers, and magazines, and several computer fonts.

A sans-serif style with lines of equal width has re-emerged with pencil and pen writing, and is often the default typeface of Web browsers.

External links

• ReadWrite Korean - Hangul Learning Software
• The Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism's article on Hangul
• Hangul lessons
• List of syllables and Romanization: Wikisource
• Browser and Hangul

• Korean alphabet and pronunciation
• Jamo in Unicode (177 KByte PDF)
• Hangul syllables (7 MByte PDF)
• The Revised Romanization of Korean
• The National Academy of the Korean Language

See also

• Korean language
• Korean language and computers
• Alphabet
• character
• Writing system
• Korean romanization
• Romaja
• Languages of China
• List of Korea-related topics
• Seong Sam-Mun