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Hangul was created in 1443 by Sejong the Great, fourth king of the Joseon dynasty. It was an attempt to increase literacy by serving as a complement to Hanja, which were Chinese characters used to write Literary Chinese in Korea by the 2nd century BCE, and had been adapted to write Korean by the 6th century CE.[9]
Modern Hangul orthography uses 24 basic letters: 14 consonant letters[c] and 10 vowel letters.[d] There are also 27 complex letters that are formed by combining the basic letters: 5 tense consonant letters,[e] 11 complex consonant letters,[f] and 11 complex vowel letters.[g] Four basic letters in the original alphabet are no longer used: 1 vowel letter[h] and 3 consonant letters.[i] Korean letters are written in syllabic blocks with the alphabetic letters arranged in two dimensions. For example, the South Korean city of Seoul is written as 서울, not ㅅㅓㅇㅜㄹ.[10] 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 syllables are structured depends solely 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.[10]
As in traditional Chinese and Japanese writing, as well as many other texts in East and southeast 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 both North and South Korea. It is a co-official writing system in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County in Jilin Province, China. Hangul has also seen limited use by speakers of the Cia-Cia language in Indonesia.[11]
The word "Hangul" and the basic jamo of the Korean alphabet
The Korean alphabet was originally named Hunminjeong'eum (훈민정음) by King Sejong the Great in 1443.[13] Hunminjeong'eum is also the document that explained logic and science behind the script in 1446.
The name hangeul (한글) was coined by Korean linguist Ju Si-gyeong in 1912. The name combines the ancient Korean word han (한), meaning great, and geul (글), meaning script. The word han is used to refer to Korea in general, so the name also means Korean script.[14] It has been romanized in multiple ways:
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.
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]
Koreans primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including Idu script, Hyangchal, Gugyeol and Gakpil.[17][18][19][20] However, many lower class uneducated Koreans were illiterate due to the difficulty of learning the Korean and Chinese languages, as well as the large number of Chinese characters that are used.[21] To promote literacy among the common people, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, Sejong the Great, personally created and promulgated a new alphabet.[3][21][22] Although it is widely assumed that King Sejong ordered the Hall of Worthies to invent Hangul, contemporary records such as the Veritable Records of King Sejong and Jeong Inji's preface to the Hunminjeongeum Haerye emphasize that he invented it himself.[23]
The Korean alphabet was designed so that people with little education could learn to read and write.[24] According to the Hunminjeongeum Haerye Edition, King Sejong expressed his intention to understand the language of the people in his country and to express their meanings more conveniently in writing. He noted that the shapes of the traditional Chinese characters, as well as factors such as the thickness, stroke count, and order of strokes in calligraphy, were extremely complex, making it difficult for people to recognize and understand them individually. A popular saying about the alphabet is, "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."[25]
A page from the Hunminjeong'eum Eonhae. The Hangul-only column, third from the left (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.[26] After the creation of Hangul, people from the lower class or the commoners had a chance to be literate. They learned how to read and write Korean, not just the upper classes and literary elite. They learn Hangul independently without formal schooling or such.[27]
Opposition
The Korean alphabet faced opposition in the 1440s by the literary elite, including Choe Manri and other Korean Confucian scholars. They believed Hanja was the only legitimate writing system. They also saw the circulation of the Korean alphabet as a road to break away from the Sinosphere as well as a threat to their status.[21][28][29] However, the Korean alphabet entered popular culture as King Sejong had intended, used especially by women and writers of popular fiction.[30]
King Yeonsangun banned the study and publication of the Korean alphabet in 1504, after a document criticizing the king was published.[31] Similarly, King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun, a governmental institution related to Hangul research, in 1506.[32]
Revival
The late 16th century, however, saw a revival of the Korean alphabet as gasa and sijo poetry flourished. In the 17th century, the Korean alphabet novels became a major genre.[33] However, the use of the Korean alphabet had gone without orthographical standardization for so long that spelling had become quite irregular.[30]
Songangasa, a collection of poems by Jeong Cheol, printed in 1768.
Thanks to growing Korean nationalism, the Gabo Reformists' push, and Western missionaries' promotion of the Korean alphabet in schools and literature,[38] the Hangul Korean alphabet was adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894.[31] 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.[39]
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.[40]
The orthography of the Korean alphabet was partially standardized in 1912, when the vowel arae-a (ㆍ)—which has now disappeared from Korean—was restricted to Sino-Korean roots: the emphatic consonants were standardized to ㅺ, ㅼ, ㅽ, ㅆ, ㅾ and final consonants restricted to ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ. Long vowels were marked by a diacritic dot to the left of the syllable, but this was dropped in 1921.[30]
A second colonial reform occurred in 1930. The arae-a was abolished: the emphatic consonants were changed to ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ and more final consonants ㄷ, ㅈ, ㅌ, ㅊ, ㅍ, ㄲ, ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅄ were allowed, making the orthography more morphophonemic. The double consonant ㅆ was written alone (without a vowel) when it occurred between nouns, and the nominative particle 가 was introduced after vowels, replacing 이.[30]
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.[30] 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 assimilation and genocide.[41][42]
Both North Korea and South Korea have used the Korean alphabet or mixed script as their official writing system, with ever-decreasing use of Hanja especially in the North.
In South Korea
Beginning in the 1970s, Hanja began to experience a gradual decline in commercial or unofficial writing in the South due to government intervention, with some South Korean newspapers now only using Hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms. However, as Korean documents, history, literature and records throughout its history until the contemporary period were written primarily in Literary Chinese using Hanja as its primary script, a good working knowledge of Chinese characters especially in academia is still important for anyone who wishes to interpret and study older texts from Korea, or anyone who wishes to read scholarly texts in the humanities.[43]
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.[43]
In North Korea
North Korea instated Hangul as its exclusive writing system in 1949 on the orders of Kim Il Sung of the Workers' Party of Korea, and officially banned the use of Hanja.[44]
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.[53]
Letters in the Korean alphabet are called jamo (자모). There are 14 consonants (자음) and 10 vowels (모음) used in the modern alphabet. They were first named in Hunmongjahoe [ko], a hanja textbook written by Choe Sejin. Additionally, there are 27 complex letters that are formed by combining the basic letters: 5 tense consonant letters, 11 complex consonant letters, and 11 complex vowel letters.
In typography design and in IME automata, the letters that make up a block are called jaso (자소).
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).
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 cords while heavily aspirated consonants (such as the Korean ㅍ, /pʰ/) are produced by opening them.[54]
Korean sonorants are voiced.
Vowels
The chart below shows the 21 vowels used in the modern Korean alphabet in South Korean alphabetic order with Revised Romanization equivalents for each letter and pronunciation in IPA (see Korean phonology for more).
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).[55] 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.[56]
Alphabetic order
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.[57]
The collation order of Korean in Unicode is based on the South Korean order.
This is the basis of the modern alphabetic orders. It was before the development of the Korean tense consonants and the double letters that represent them, and before the conflation of the letters ㅇ (null) and ㆁ (ng). Thus, when the North Korean and South Korean governments implemented full use of the Korean alphabet, they ordered these letters differently, with North Korea placing new letters at the end of the alphabet and South Korea grouping similar letters together.[59][60]
North Korean order
The double letters are placed after all the single letters (except the null initial ㅇ, which goes at the end).
ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ ㅇ
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 the simple vowels, again maintaining Choe's alphabetic order.
Unlike when it is initial, this ㅇ is pronounced, as the nasal ㅇng, 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.[59]
South Korean order
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 iotated, then iotated with added i. Diphthongs beginning with w are ordered according to their spelling, as ㅗ or ㅜ plus a second vowel, not as separate digraphs.
Every syllable begins with a consonant (or the silent ㅇ) that is followed by a vowel (e.g. ㄷ + ㅏ = 다). Some syllables such as 달 and 닭 have a final consonant or final consonant cluster (받침). Thus, 399 combinations are possible for two-letter syllables and 10,773 possible combinations for syllables with more than two letters (27 possible final endings), for a total of 11,172 possible combinations of Korean alphabet letters to form syllables.[59]
The sort order including archaic Hangul letters defined in the South Korean national standard KS X 1026-1 is:[61]
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 윽euk, 읃eut, and 읏eut did not occur in Hanja, Choe gave those letters the modified names 기역giyeok, 디귿digeut, and 시옷siot, using Hanja that did not fit the pattern (for 기역) or native Korean syllables (for 디귿 and 시옷).[62]
Originally, Choe gave ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅎ 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
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 된toen meaning hard.
In North Korea, an alternative way to refer to a consonant is letter + ŭ (ㅡ), for example, gŭ (그) for the letter ㄱ, and ssŭ (쓰) for the letter ㅆ.
As in South Korea, the names of vowels in the Korean alphabet are the same as the sound of each vowel.
In South Korea
The chart below shows names used in South Korea for consonants of the Korean alphabet. The letters are arranged in the South Korean alphabetic order, and the letter names are romanised in the Revised Romanization system, which is the official romanization system of South Korea. The tense consonants are described with the word 쌍ssang meaning double.
Letters in the Korean alphabet have adopted certain rules of Chinese calligraphy, although ㅇ and ㅎ use a circle, which is not used in printed Chinese characters.[63][64]
ㄱ (giyeok 기역)
ㄴ (nieun 니은)
ㄷ (digeut 디귿)
ㄹ (rieul 리을)
ㅁ (mieum 미음)
ㅂ (bieup 비읍)
ㅅ (siot 시옷)
ㅇ (ieung 이응)
ㅈ (jieut 지읒)
ㅊ (chieut 치읓)
ㅋ (ḳieuk 키읔)
ㅌ (ṭieut 티읕)
ㅍ (p̣ieup 피읖)
ㅎ (hieut 히읗)
ㅏ (a)
ㅐ (ae)
ㅓ (eo)
ㅔ (e)
ㅗ (o)
ㅜ (u)
ㅡ (eu)
For the iotated vowels, which are not shown, the short stroke is simply doubled.
For instance, the consonant ㅌ ṭ [tʰ] is composed of three strokes, each one meaningful: the top stroke indicates ㅌ is a plosive, like ㆆʔ, ㄱg, ㄷd, ㅈj, which have the same stroke (the last is an affricate, a plosive–fricative sequence); the middle stroke indicates that ㅌ is aspirated, like ㅎh, ㅋḳ, ㅊch, which also have this stroke; and the bottom stroke indicates that ㅌ is alveolar, like ㄴn, ㄷd, and ㄹl. (It is said to represent the shape of the tongue when pronouncing coronal consonants, though this is not certain.) Two obsolete consonants, ㆁ and ㅱ, have dual pronunciations, and appear to be composed of two elements corresponding to these two pronunciations: [ŋ]~silence for ㆁ and [m]~[w] for ㅱ.
With vowel letters, a short stroke connected to the main line of the letter indicates that this is one of the vowels that can be iotated; this stroke is then doubled when the vowel is iotated. The position of the stroke indicates which harmonic class the vowel belongs to, light (top or right) or dark (bottom or left). In the modern alphabet, an additional vertical stroke indicates i mutation, deriving ㅐ[ɛ], ㅚ[ø], and ㅟ[y] from ㅏ[a], ㅗ[o], and ㅜ[u]. However, this is not part of the intentional design of the script, but rather a natural development from what were originally diphthongs ending in the vowel ㅣ[i]. Indeed, in many Korean dialects,[citation needed] including the standard dialect of Seoul, some of these may still be diphthongs. For example, in the Seoul dialect, ㅚ may alternatively be pronounced [we̞], and ㅟ[ɥi]. Note: ㅔ[e] as a morpheme is ㅓ combined with ㅣ as a vertical stroke. As a phoneme, its sound is not by i mutation of ㅓ[ʌ].
Beside the letters, the Korean alphabet originally employed diacritic marks to indicate pitch accent. A syllable with a high pitch (거성) was marked with a dot (〮) to the left of it (when writing vertically); a syllable with a rising pitch (상성) was marked with a double dot, like a colon (〯). These are no longer used, as modern Seoul Korean has lost tonality. Vowel length has also been neutralized in Modern Korean[65] and is no longer written.
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.
Basic shape: ㄱ is a side view of the back of the tongue raised toward the velum (soft palate). (For illustration, access the external link below.) ㅋ is derived from ㄱ with a stroke for the burst of aspiration.
Basic shape: ㅅ was originally shaped like a wedge ∧, without the serif on top. It represents a side view of the teeth.[citation needed] The line topping ㅈ represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The stroke topping ㅊ represents an additional burst of aspiration.
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.
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.
Basic shape: ㅇ is an outline of the throat. Originally ㅇ was two letters, a simple circle for silence (null consonant), and a circle topped by a vertical line, ㆁ, for the nasal ng. A now obsolete letter, ㆆ, represented a glottal stop, which is pronounced in the throat and had closure represented by the top line, like ㄱㄷㅈ. Derived from ㆆ is ㅎ, in which the extra stroke represents a burst of aspiration.
A diagram showing the derivation of vowels in the Korean alphabet.
Vowel letters are based on three elements:
A horizontal line representing the flat Earth, the essence of yin.
A point for the Sun in the heavens, the essence of yang. (This becomes a short stroke when written with a brush.)
A vertical line for the upright Human, the neutral mediator between the Heaven and Earth.
Short strokes (dots in the earliest documents) were added to these three basic elements to derive the vowel letter:
Simple vowels
Horizontal letters: these are mid-high back vowels.
bright ㅗo
dark ㅜu
dark ㅡeu (ŭ)
Vertical letters: these were once low vowels.
bright ㅏa
dark ㅓeo (ŏ)
bright ㆍ
neutral ㅣi
Compound vowels
The Korean alphabet does not have a letter for w sound. Since an o or u before an a or eo became a [w] sound, and [w] occurred nowhere else, [w] could always be analyzed as a phonemico or u, and no letter for [w] was needed. However, vowel harmony is observed: dark ㅜu with dark ㅓeo for ㅝwo; bright ㅗo with bright ㅏa for ㅘwa:
ㅘwa = ㅗo + ㅏa
ㅝwo = ㅜu + ㅓeo
ㅙwae = ㅗo + ㅐae
ㅞwe = ㅜu + ㅔe
The compound vowels ending in ㅣi were originally diphthongs. However, several have since evolved into pure vowels:
There is no letter for y. Instead, this sound is indicated by doubling the stroke attached to the baseline of the vowel letter. Of the seven basic vowels, four could be preceded by a y sound, and these four were written as a dot next to a line. (Through the influence of Chinese calligraphy, the dots soon became connected to the line: ㅓㅏㅜㅗ.) A preceding y sound, called iotation, was indicated by doubling this dot: ㅕㅑㅠㅛyeo, ya, yu, yo. The three vowels that could not be iotated were written with a single stroke: ㅡㆍㅣeu, (arae a), i.
Simple
Iotated
ㅏ
ㅑ
ㅓ
ㅕ
ㅗ
ㅛ
ㅜ
ㅠ
ㅡ
ㅣ
The simple iotated vowels are:
ㅑya from ㅏa
ㅕyeo from ㅓeo
ㅛyo from ㅗo
ㅠyu from ㅜu
There are also two iotated diphthongs:
ㅒyae from ㅐae
ㅖye from ㅔe
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 ㅣi. The yin vowels were ㅡㅜㅓeu, u, eo; the dots are in the yin directions of down and left. The yang vowels were ㆍㅗㅏə, 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 ㆍə is now obsolete except in the Jeju language.)
The third parameter in designing the vowel letters was choosing ㅡ as the graphic base of ㅜ and ㅗ, and ㅣ as the graphic base of ㅓ and ㅏ. A full understanding of what these horizontal and vertical groups had in common would require knowing the exact sound values these vowels had in the 15th century.
The uncertainty is primarily with the three letters ㆍㅓㅏ. Some linguists reconstruct these as *a,*ɤ,*e, respectively; others as *ə,*e,*a. A third reconstruction is to make them all middle vowels as *ʌ,*ɤ,*a.[66] With the third reconstruction, Middle Korean vowels actually line up in a vowel harmony pattern, albeit with only one front vowel and four middle vowels:
ㅣ*i
ㅡ*ɯ
ㅜ*u
ㅓ*ɤ
ㆍ*ʌ
ㅗ*o
ㅏ*a
However, the horizontal letters ㅡㅜㅗeu, 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.
The traditionally accepted account[k][67][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, ㆍ symbolically stands for the (sun in) heaven, ㅡ stands for the (flat) earth, and ㅣ stands for an (upright) human. The original sequence of the Korean vowels, as stated in Hunminjeongeum, listed these three vowels first, followed by various combinations. Thus, the original order of the vowels was: ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ ㅗ ㅏ ㅜ ㅓ ㅛ ㅑ ㅠ ㅕ. Two positive vowels (ㅗ ㅏ) including one ㆍ are followed by two negative vowels including one ㆍ, then by two positive vowels each including two of ㆍ, and then by two negative vowels each including two of ㆍ.
The same theory provides the most simple explanation of the shapes of the consonants as an approximation of the shapes of the most representative organ needed to form that sound. The original order of the consonants in Hunminjeong'eum was: ㄱ ㅋ ㆁ ㄷ ㅌ ㄴ ㅂ ㅍ ㅁ ㅈ ㅊ ㅅ ㆆ ㅎ ㅇ ㄹ ㅿ.
ㄱ representing the [k] sound geometrically describes its tongue back raised.
ㅋ representing the [kʰ] sound is derived from ㄱ by adding another stroke.
ㆁ representing the [ŋ] sound may have been derived from ㅇ by addition of a stroke.
ㄷ representing the [t] sound is derived from ㄴ by adding a stroke.
ㅌ representing the [tʰ] sound is derived from ㄷ by adding another stroke.
ㄴ representing the [n] sound geometrically describes a tongue making contact with an upper palate.
ㅂ representing the [p] sound is derived from ㅁ by adding a stroke.
ㅍ representing the [pʰ] sound is a variant of ㅂ by adding another stroke.
ㅁ representing the [m] sound geometrically describes a closed mouth.
ㅈ representing the [t͡ɕ] sound is derived from ㅅ by adding a stroke.
ㅊ representing the [t͡ɕʰ] sound is derived from ㅈ by adding another stroke.
ㅅ representing the [s] sound geometrically describes the sharp teeth.[citation needed]
ㆆ representing the [ʔ] sound is derived from ㅇ by adding a stroke.
ㅎ representing the [h] sound is derived from ㆆ by adding another stroke.
ㅇ representing the absence of a consonant geometrically describes the throat.
ㄹ representing the [ɾ] and [ɭ] sounds geometrically describes the bending tongue.
ㅿ representing a weak ㅅ sound describes the sharp teeth, but has a different origin than ㅅ.[clarification needed]
A close-up of the inscription on a statue of King Sejong. It reads Sejong Daewang세종대왕 and illustrates the forms of the letters originally promulgated by Sejong. Note the dots on the vowels, the geometric symmetry of s and j in the first two syllables, the asymmetrical lip at the top-left of the d in the third, and the distinction between initial and final ieung in the last. (Top) 'Phags-pa letters [k,t,p,s,l], and their supposed Korean derivatives [k,t,p,t͡ɕ,l]. Note the lip on both 'Phags-pa [t] and the Korean alphabet ㄷ. (Bottom) Derivation of 'Phags-pa w, v, f from variants of the letter [h] (left) plus a subscript [w], and analogous composition of the Korean alphabet w, v, f from variants of the basic letter [p] plus a circle.
Although the Hunminjeong'eum Haerye explains the design of the consonantal letters in terms of articulatory phonetics, as a purely innovative creation, several theories suggest which external sources may have inspired or influenced King Sejong's creation. Professor Gari Ledyard of Columbia University studied possible connections between Hangul and the Mongol 'Phags-pa script of the Yuan dynasty. He, however, also believed that the role of 'Phags-pa script in the creation of the Korean alphabet was quite limited, stating it should not be assumed that Hangul was derived from 'Phags-pa script based on his theory:
It should be clear to any reader that in the total picture, that ['Phags-pa script's] role was quite limited ... Nothing would disturb me more, after this study is published, than to discover in a work on the history of writing a statement like the following: "According to recent investigations, the Korean alphabet was derived from the Mongol's phags-pa script."[68]
Ledyard posits that five of the Korean letters have shapes inspired by 'Phags-pa; a sixth basic letter, the null initial ㅇ, was invented by Sejong. The rest of the letters were derived internally from these six, essentially as described in the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye. However, the five borrowed consonants were not the graphically simplest letters considered basic by the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye, but instead the consonants basic to Chinese phonology: ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ, and ㄹ.[citation needed]
The Hunmin Jeong-eum states that King Sejong adapted the 古篆 (gojeon, Gǔ Seal Script) in creating the Korean alphabet. The 古篆 has never been identified. The primary meaning of 古gǔ is old (Old Seal Script), frustrating philologists because the Korean alphabet bears no functional similarity to Chinese 篆字zhuànzìseal scripts. However, Ledyard believes 古gǔ may be a pun on 蒙古Měnggǔ "Mongol", and that 古篆 is an abbreviation of 蒙古篆字 "Mongol Seal Script", that is, the formal variant of the 'Phags-pa alphabet written to look like the Chinese seal script. There were 'Phags-pa manuscripts in the Korean palace library, including some in the seal-script form, and several of Sejong's ministers knew the script well. If this was the case, Sejong's evasion on the Mongol connection can be understood in light of Korea's relationship with Ming China after the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and of the literati's contempt for the Mongols.[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 ㅁ from ㅂ by removing the top, it is not clear how to derive ㅂ from ㅁ in the traditional account, since the shape of ㅂ is not analogous to those of the other plosives.[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 ㄱ) would have looked almost identical to the vowel ㅣ[i]. Sejong's solution solved both problems: The vertical stroke left from ㄱ was added to the null symbol ㅇ to create ㆁ (a circle with a vertical line on top), iconically capturing both the pronunciation [ŋ] in the middle or end of a word, and the usual silence at the beginning. (The graphic distinction between null ㅇ and ngㆁ was eventually lost.)
Another letter composed of two elements to represent two regional pronunciations was ㅱ, which transcribed the Chinese initial微. This represented either m or w in various Chinese dialects, and was composed of ㅁ [m] plus ㅇ (from 'Phags-pa [w]). In 'Phags-pa, a loop under a letter represented w after vowels, and Ledyard hypothesized that this became the loop at the bottom of ㅱ. In 'Phags-pa the Chinese initial 微 is also transcribed as a compound with w, but in its case the w is placed under an h. Actually, the Chinese consonant series 微非敷w, v, f is transcribed in 'Phags-pa by the addition of a w under three graphic variants of the letter for h, and the Korean alphabet parallels this convention by adding the w loop to the labial series ㅁㅂㅍm, b, p, producing now-obsolete ㅱㅸㆄw, 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 ㄷd [t] always had a small lip protruding from the upper left corner, just as the 'Phags-pa ꡊd [t] did. This lip can be traced back to the Tibetan letter དd.[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.[69]
Hangul supremacy
Hangul supremacy (Korean: 한글 우월주의) or Hangul scientific supremacy is the claim that the Hangul alphabet is the simplest and most logical writing system in the world.[70]
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.
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."[72]
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.
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 tall zebra), 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
(also commonly found in the Jeju language: /ɒ/, closely similar to vowel:ㅓeo)
Letter name
아래아 (arae-a)
Remarks
formerly the base vowel ㅡeu 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
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 qué), 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 diàn), 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 Shanghaineseslack 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
ㆍə (in Modern Korean called arae-a아래아 "lower a"): Presumably pronounced [ʌ], similar to modern ㅓ (eo). It is written as a dot, positioned beneath the consonant. The arae-a is not entirely obsolete, as it can be found in various brand names, and in the Jeju language, where it is pronounced [ɒ]. The ə formed a medial of its own, or was found in the diphthong ㆎəy, written with the dot under the consonant and ㅣ (i) to its right, in the same fashion as ㅚ or ㅢ.
ㅿz (bansiot반시옷 "half s", banchieum반치음): An unusual sound, perhaps IPA [ʝ̃] (a nasalizedpalatal fricative). Modern Korean words previously spelled with ㅿ substitute ㅅ or ㅇ.
ㆆʔ (yeorinhieut여린히읗 "light hieut" or doenieung된이응 "strong ieung"): A glottal stop, lighter than ㅎ and harsher than ㅇ.
ㆁŋ (yedieung옛이응) "old ieung" : The original letter for [ŋ]; now conflated with ㅇieung. (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.)
ㅸβ (gabyeounbieup가벼운비읍, sungyeongeumbieup순경음비읍): 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, ㅱw ([w] or [m]), ㆄf, and ㅹff[v̤]. It operates slightly like a following h in the Latin alphabet (one may think of these letters as bh, mh, ph, and pph respectively). Koreans do not distinguish these sounds now, if they ever did, conflating the fricatives with the corresponding plosives.
New Korean Orthography
The words 놉니다, 흘렀다, 깨달으니, 지어, 고와, 왕, 가져서 written in New Orthography.
Two obsolete letters were restored: ⟨ㅿ⟩ (리읃), which was used to indicate an alternation in pronunciation between initial /l/ and final /d/; and ⟨ㆆ⟩ (히으), which was only pronounced between vowels.
Two modifications of the letter ㄹ were introduced, one which is silent finally, and one which doubled between vowels. A hybrid ㅂ-ㅜ letter was introduced for words that alternated between those two sounds (that is, a /b/, which became /w/ before a vowel).
Finally, a vowel ⟨1⟩ was introduced for variable iotation.
Hangul jamo characters in UnicodeHangul Compatibility Jamo block in Unicode
Hangul Jamo (U+1100–U+11FF) and Hangul Compatibility Jamo (U+3130–U+318F) blocks were added to the Unicode Standard in June 1993 with the release of version 1.1. A separate Hangul Syllables block (not shown below due to its length) contains pre-composed syllable block characters, which were first added at the same time, although they were relocated to their present locations in July 1996 with the release of version 2.0.[74]
Hangul Jamo Extended-A (U+A960–U+A97F) and Hangul Jamo Extended-B (U+D7B0–U+D7FF) blocks were added to the Unicode Standard in October 2009 with the release of version 5.2.
2. ᄀ: 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.
11,172 precomposed syllables in the Korean alphabet make up the Hangul Syllables block (U+AC00–U+D7A3)
Morpho-syllabic blocks
Except for a few grammatical morphemes prior to the twentieth century, no letter stands alone to represent elements of the Korean language. Instead, letters are grouped into syllabic or morphemic blocks of at least two and often three: a consonant or a doubled consonant called the initial (초성, 初聲choseongsyllable onset), a vowel or diphthong called the medial (중성, 中聲jungseongsyllable nucleus), and, optionally, a consonant or consonant cluster at the end of the syllable, called the final (종성, 終聲jongseongsyllable coda). When a syllable has no actual initial consonant, the null initialㅇieung 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, ㅇng only occurs in final position, while the doubled letters that can occur in final position are limited to ㅆss and ㄲkk.
Not including obsolete letters, 11,172 blocks are possible in the Korean alphabet.[78]
Letter placement within a block
The placement or stacking of letters in the block follows set patterns based on the shape of the medial.
Consonant and vowel sequences such as ㅄbs,ㅝwo, or obsolete ㅵbsd,ㆋüye 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 ㅡeu, then it is written under the initial; if it has a vertical axis like ㅣi, then it is written to the right of the initial; and if it combines both orientations, like ㅢui, then it wraps around the initial from the bottom to the right:
initial
medial
initial
medial
initial
med. 2
med. 1
A final consonant, if present, is always written at the bottom, under the vowel. This is called 받침batchim "supporting floor":
initial
medial
final
initial
medial
final
initial
med. 2
med.
final
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: 읍eup;
Syllables with a vertical medial and simple final are written clockwise: 쌍ssang;
Syllables with a wrapping medial switch direction (down-right-down): 된doen;
Syllables with a complex final are written left to right at the bottom: 밟balp.
Block shape
Normally the resulting block is written within a square. Some recent fonts (for example Eun,[79]HY깊은샘물M[citation needed], and UnJamo[citation needed]) 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:[clarification needed]
Do not stretch initial consonant vertically, but leave whitespace below if no lower vowel and/or no final consonant.
Do not stretch right-hand vowel vertically, but leave whitespace 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 whitespace to its left.
Do not stretch or pad each block to a fixed width, but allow kerning (variable width) where syllable blocks with no right-hand vowel and no double final consonant can be narrower than blocks that do have a right-hand vowel or double final consonant.
In Korean, typefaces that do not have a fixed block boundary size are called 탈네모 글꼴 (tallemo geulkkol, "out of square typeface"). If horizontal text in the typeface ends up looking top-aligned with a ragged bottom edge, the typeface can be called 빨랫줄 글꼴 (ppallaetjul geulkkol, "clothesline typeface").[citation needed]
These fonts have been used as design accents on signs or headings, rather than for typesetting large volumes of body text.
Linear Korean
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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).[80] 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.[81]
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
After the Gabo Reform in 1894, Joseon 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
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
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).[82] 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.[83] 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.[84] 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).
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.[85]
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).[85]
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 Joseon court.
Modern styles that are more suited for printed media were developed in the 20th century. In 1993, new names for both Myeongjo (明朝) and Gothic styles were introduced when Ministry of Culture initiated an effort to standardize typographic terms, and the names Batang (바탕, meaning background) and Dotum (돋움, meaning "stand out") replaced Myeongjo and Gothic respectively. These names are also used in Microsoft Windows.
A sans-serif style with lines of equal width is popular with pencil and pen writing and is often the default typeface of Web browsers. A minor advantage of this style is that it makes it easier to distinguish -eung from -ung even in small or untidy print, as the jongseong ieung (ㅇ) of such fonts usually lacks a serif that could be mistaken for the short vertical line of the letter ㅜ(u).
^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.) ...
^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.
^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.
^"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.
^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.
^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.
^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. ISBN9789860132946. Archived from the original on 26 September 2022. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
^Dong Zhongsi (董忠司), 「台灣閩南語槪論」講授資料彙編, Taiwan Languages and Literature Society
^ abShin, 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. ISBN978-1-118-37100-8.
^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. Archived from the original on 6 March 2021. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
^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.
^Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, The World's Writing Systems (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 219–220
^Korea Newsreview. (1988). South Korea: Korea News review Incorporated. Volume 17, Issues 27–53, page 29
^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.
^Fishman, Joshua; Garcia, Ofelia (2011). Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity: The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts. Vol. 2. Oxford University Press. pp. 156–158.
Chang, Suk-jin (1996). "Scripts and Sounds". Korean. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN978-1-55619-728-4. (Volume 4 of the London Oriental and African Language Library).
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