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Hangul

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For other uses, see Hangul (disambiguation).
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Hangul (한글) or Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글)[1]
Type Alphabet
Spoken languages Korean
Created by King Sejong the Great
Time period 1443 to the present
Unicode range U+AC00 to U+D7A3,
U+1100 to U+11FF,
U+3131 to U+318E,
U+FFA1 to U+FFDC
ISO 15924 Hang
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Hangul (pronounced /ˈhɑːŋɡʊl/, or Korean [haːnɡɯl] (help·info)) is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logographic Sino-Korean hanja system. It is the official script of North Korea, South Korea and the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China.

Hangul is a phonemic alphabet organized into syllabic blocks. Each block consists of at least two of the 24 Hangul letters (jamo), with at least one each of the 14 consonants and 10 vowels. These syllabic blocks can be written horizontally from left to right as well as vertically from top to bottom in columns from right to left. Originally, the alphabet had several additional letters (see obsolete jamo). For a phonological description of the letters, see Korean phonology.

[ Names

The word Hangeul (Revised Romanization) written in Hangul
The word Hangeul (Revised Romanization)
written in Hangul
South Korean name
Hangul 한글
Revised Romanization Han(-)geul
McCune-Reischauer Han'gŭl
North Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl 조선글
Hancha 朝鮮글
McCune-Reischauer Chosŏn'gŭl
Revised Romanization Joseon(-)geul

[ Official names

[ Other names

Until the early twentieth century, Hangul was denigrated as vulgar by the literate elite who preferred the traditional hanja writing system.[3] They gave it such names as:

However, these names are now archaic, as the use of hanja in writing has become very rare in South Korea and completely phased out in North Korea. Today, the name urigeul / urigŭl (우리글) or "our script" is used in both North and South Korea in addition to hangeul / han'gŭl.

History of the alphabet

Middle Bronze Age 19 c. BCE
Meroitic 3 c. BCE
Ogham 4 c. CE
Hangul 1443 CE
Canadian syllabics 1840 CE
Zhuyin 1913 CE
complete genealogy

[ History

Main article: Origin of Hangul
A page from the Hunmin Jeong-eum. The hangul-only column, fourth from left, (나랏말ᄊᆞ미), has pitch-accent diacritics to the left of the syllable blocks.
A page from the Hunmin Jeong-eum. The hangul-only column, fourth from left, (나랏말ᄊᆞ미), has pitch-accent diacritics to the left of the syllable blocks.

Hangul was promulgated by the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty, Sejong the Great. The Hall of Worthies (Jiphyeonjeon, 집현전) is often credited for the work.[5]

The project was completed in late December 1443 or January 1444, and described in 1446 in a document titled Hunmin Jeongeum ("The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People"), after which the alphabet itself was named.[3] The publication date of the Hunmin Jeong-eum, October 9, became Hangul Day in South Korea. Its North Korean equivalent is on January 15.

Various speculations about the creation process were put to rest by the discovery in 1940 of the 1446 Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye ("Hunmin Jeong-eum Explanation and Examples"). This document explains the design of the consonant letters according to articulatory phonetics and the vowel letters according to the principles of yin and yang and vowel harmony. The phonetic principals derive from Ming Chinese studies, while the alphabetic principal and the forms of the core consonants were probably inspired by the Phagspa script.[6]

King Sejong explained that he created the new script because the Korean language was different from Chinese; using Chinese characters (known as hanja) to write was so difficult for the common people that only privileged aristocrats, usually male, (yangban) could read and write fluently. The majority of Koreans were effectively illiterate before the invention of Hangul.

Hangul was designed so that even a commoner could learn to read and write; the Haerye says "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."[7]

Hangul faced opposition by the literate elite, such as Choe Manri and other Confucian scholars in the 1440s, who believed hanja to be the only legitimate writing system, and perhaps saw it as a threat to their status.[5] However, it entered popular culture as Sejong had intended, being used especially by women and writers of popular fiction.[6] It was effective enough at disseminating information among the uneducated that Yeonsangun, the paranoid tenth king, forbade the study or use of Hangul and banned Hangul documents in 1504,[8] and King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun (언문청 諺文廳, governmental institution related to hangul research) in 1506.[9]

The 16th century saw a revival of Hangul, with gasa literature and later sijo flourishing. In the 17th century, Hangul novels became a major genre.[10] By this point spelling had become quite irregular.[6]

Due to growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, Japan's attempt to sever Korea from China's sphere of influence, and the Gabo Reformists' push, Hangul was eventually adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894.[8] Elementary school texts began using Hangul in 1895, and the Dongnip Sinmun, established in 1896, was the first newspaper printed in both Hangul and English.[11]

After Korea was annexed by Japan in 1910, Hangul was taught in Japanese-established schools, and Korean was written in a mixed Hanja-Hangul script, where most lexical roots were written in hanja and grammatical forms in Hangul. The orthography was partially standardized in 1912, with arae a restricted to Sino-Korean, the emphatic consonants written ㅺ sg, ㅼ sd, ㅽ sb, ㅆ ss, ㅾ sj, and final consonants restricted to ㄱ g, ㄴ n, ㄹ l, ㅁ m, ㅂ b, ㅅ s, ㅇ ng, ㄺ lg, ㄻ lm, ㄼ lb (no ㄷ d, as it was replaced by s). Long vowels were marked by a diacritic dot to the left of the syllable, but this was dropped in 1921.[6]

A second colonial reform occurred in 1930. Arae a was abolished; the emphatic consonants were changed to ㄲ gg, ㄸ dd, ㅃ bb, ㅆ ss, ㅉ jj; more final consonants (ㄷㅈㅌㅊㅍㄲㄳㄵㄾㄿㅄ) were allowed, making the orthography more morphophonemic; ㅆ ss was written alone (without a vowel) when it occurred between nouns; and the nominative particle 가 ga was introduced after vowels, replacing ㅣ i. (ㅣ i had been written without an ㅇ iung. The nominative particle had been unvarying i in Sejong's day, and perhaps up to the eighteenth or nineteenth century.)[6]

Ju Sigyeong, who had coined the term hangul "great script" to replace eonmun "vulgar script" in 1912, established the Hangul Society which further reformed orthography with Standardized System of Hangul (한글 마춤법 통일안) in 1933. The principal change was to make Hangul as morphophonemic as practical given the existing letters.[6] A system for transliterating foreign orthographies was published in 1940.

However, the Korean language was banned from schools in 1938 as part of a policy of cultural assimilation,[12] and all Korean-language publications were outlawed in 1941.[13]

The definitive modern orthography was published in 1946, just after independence from Japan. 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.[6]

Since independence from Japan, the Koreas have used Hangul or mixed Hangul as their sole official writing system, with ever-decreasing use of hanja. Since the 1950s, it has become uncommon to find hanja in commercial or unofficial writing in the South, with some South Korean newspaper only using hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms. There has been widespread debate as to the future of hanja in South Korea. North Korea instated Hangul as its exclusive writing system in 1949, and banned the use of hanja completely.

[ Jamo

See also: Hangul consonant and vowel tables

Jamo (자모; 字母) or natsori (낱소리) are the units that make up the Hangul alphabet. Ja means letter or character, and mo means mother, so the name suggests that the jamo are the building-blocks of the script.

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

  • 14 simple consonant letters: ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅎ, plus obsolete ᄛ, ㅱ, ㅸ, ᄼ, ᄾ, ㅿ (alveolar), ㆁ (velar), ᅎ, ᅐ, ᅔ, ᅕ, ㆄ, ㆆ
  • 5 double letters (glottalized): ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ, plus obsolete ㅥ, ᄙ, ㅹ, ᄽ, ᄿ, ᅇ, ᇮ, ᅏ, ᅑ, ㆅ
  • 11 consonant clusters: ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄽ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, ㅄ, plus obsolete ᇃ, ᄓ, ㅦ, ᄖ, ㅧ, ㅨ, ᇉ, ᄗ, ᇋ, ᄘ, ㅪ, ㅬ, ᇘ, ㅭ, ᇚ, ᇛ, ㅮ, ㅯ, ㅰ, ᇠ, ᇡ, ㅲ, ᄟ, ㅳ, ᇣ, ㅶ, ᄨ, ㅷ, ᄪ, ᇥ, ㅺ, ㅻ, ㅼ, ᄰ, ᄱ, ㅽ, ᄵ, ㅾ, ᄷ, ᄸ, ᄹ, ᄺ, ᄻ, ᅁ, ᅂ, ᅃ, ᅄ, ᅅ, ᅆ, ᅈ, ᅉ, ᅊ, ᅋ, ᇬ, ᇭ, ㆂ, ㆃ, ᇯ, ᅍ, ᅒ, ᅓ, ᅖ, ᇵ, ᇶ, ᇷ, ᇸ, and obsolete triple clusters ᇄ, ㅩ, ᇏ, ᇑ, ᇒ, ㅫ, ᇔ, ᇕ, ᇖ, ᇞ, ㅴ, ㅵ, ᄤ, ᄥ, ᄦ, ᄳ, ᄴ

Four of the simple vowel jamo are derived by means of a short stroke to signify iotation (a preceding i sound): ㅑ ya, ㅕ yeo, ㅛ yo, and ㅠ yu. These four are counted as part of the 24 simple jamo because the iotating 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 unaspirated letters with an extra stroke.

The doubled letters 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 rather a "tense" phonation.

[ Jamo design

Hangul is partly a featural script. Scripts may transcribe languages at the level of morphemes (logographic scripts like hanja), of syllables (syllabic scripts like kana), or of segments (alphabetic scripts like the Roman alphabet used to write English and many other languages.). Hangul goes one step further 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 iotation (a preceding i- sound), harmonic class, and I-mutation for vowels.

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

With vowel jamo, a short stroke connected to the main line of the letter indicates that this is one of the vowels which 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 modern jamo, an additional vertical stroke indicates i-mutation, deriving ㅐ [ɛ], ㅔ [e], ㅚ [ø], and ㅟ [y] from ㅏ [a], ㅓ [ʌ], 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.

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 a single vowel e.

Beside the jamo, Hangul originally employed diacritic marks to indicate pitch accent. A syllable with a high pitch (거성) was marked with a dot (ჿᅠᆧ〮) to the left of it (when writing vertically); a syllable with a rising pitch (상성) was marked with a double dot, like a colon (ჿᅠᆧ〯). These are no longer used. Although vowel length was and still is phonemic in Korean, it was never indicated in Hangul, except that syllables with rising pitch (ჿᅠᆧ〯) necessarily had long vowels.

Although some aspects of Hangul reflect a shared history with the Phagspa script, and thus Indic phonology, such as the relationships among the homorganic jamo and the alphabetic principle itself, other aspects such as organization of jamo into syllablic blocks, and which Phagspa letters were chosen to be basic to the system, reflect the influence of Chinese writing and phonology.

[ Consonant jamo design

The letters for the consonants 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 Doubled
ㅈ ㅊ ㅉ
ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ
ㄷ ㅌ ㄸ
ㅂ ㅍ ㅃ
ㅅ ㅆ

The Korean names for the groups are taken from Chinese phonetics:

The phonetic theory inherent in the derivation of glottal stop ㆆ and aspirate ㅎ from the null ㅇ may be more accurate than Chinese phonetics or modern IPA usage. In Chinese theory and 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 an inherent place of articulation, just as their Hangul representations based on the null symbol assume.

[ Vowel jamo design

Vowel letters are based on three elements:

Short strokes (dots in the earliest documents) were added to these three basic elements to derive the simple vowel jamo:

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

    • ㅐ ae = ㅏ a + ㅣ i
    • ㅔ e = ㅓ eo + ㅣ i
    • ㅙ wae = ㅘ wa + ㅣ i
    • ㅚ oe = ㅗ o + ㅣ i
    • ㅞ we = ㅝ wo + ㅣ i
    • ㅟ wi = ㅜ u + ㅣ i
    • ㅢ ui = ㅡ eu + ㅣ i
Simple Iotized
ㅏ ㅑ
ㅓ ㅕ
ㅗ ㅛ
ㅜ ㅠ
ㅡ
ㅣ

The simple iotated vowels are,

There are also two iotated diphthongs,

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 which "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 needed to be yin as well. There was a third harmonic group called "mediating" ('neutral' in Western terminology) that could coexist with either yin or yang vowels.

The Korean neutral vowel was ㅣ i. The yin vowels were ㅡㅜㅓ eu, u, eo; the dots are in the yin directions of 'down' and 'left'. The yang vowels were ㆍㅗㅏ 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 jamo ㅡㆍㅣ were chosen to represent the concepts of yin, yang, and mediation: Earth, Heaven, and Human. (The letter ㆍ ə is now obsolete.)

There was yet a third parameter in designing the vowel jamo, namely, 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. Our uncertainty is primarily with the three jamo ㆍㅓㅏ. Some linguists reconstruct these as *a, *ɤ, *e, respectively; others as *ə, *e, *a. However, the horizontal jamo 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.

[ Ledyard's theory of consonant jamo design

For more details on this topic, see origin of hangul.
(Top) Phagspa letters [k, t, p, s, l], and their supposed Hangul derivatives [k, t, p, ts, l]. Note the lip on both Phagspa [t] and Hangul ㄷ. (Bottom) Derivation of Phagspa w, v, f from variants of the letter [h] (left) plus a subscript [w], and analogous composition of Hangul w, v, f from variants of the basic letter [p] plus a circle.
(Top) Phagspa letters [k, t, p, s, l], and their supposed Hangul derivatives [k, t, p, ts, l]. Note the lip on both Phagspa [t] and Hangul ㄷ.
(Bottom) Derivation of Phagspa w, v, f from variants of the letter [h] (left) plus a subscript [w], and analogous composition of Hangul w, v, f from variants of the basic letter [p] plus a circle.

Although the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye explains the design of the consonantal jamo in terms of articulatory phonetics, as a purely innovative creation, there are several theories as to which external sources may have inspired or influenced King Sejong's creation. Professor Gari Ledyard of Columbia University believes that five consonant letters were derived from the Mongol Phagspa alphabet of the Yuan dynasty. A sixth basic letter, the null initial ㅇ, was invented by Sejong. The rest of thee jamo were derived internally from these six, essentially as deSource: this wikipedia article, under GFDL.
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