1.1 The hangul (Korean) alphabet  

How hangul was created

Hangul (한글) is the name of the writing system for Korean. The name comes from 한, for one or the main, and 글, a script or writing. It is a unique writing system designed from the ground up for the purpose of transcribing the Korean language (한국어).

Hangul was created in 1443 and officially announced in 1446 by King Sejong the Great, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty of Korea. It has since evolved over the years and finally won out in its competition with hanja (한자, Chinese-derived characters) to become the primary writing script for the Korean language.

The historical background of hangul's creation is significant in the sense that this design from scratch aspect is what gives hangul its intuitive characteristics. That is to say, unlike most other languages which have developed incrementally over thousands of years of evolution, hangul had the benefit of a one-time design by a committee, where the creators applied good sense and practicality from the beginning to create a logically sound, easy-to-use script. This freed the script from the burden of staying compatible with a pre-existing system, which is often the greatest challenge for any new creation with an existing user base.  

Phonogramic, alphabetic, syllabic

Hangul is a phonogramic language like English, where the symbols of the language express sounds (phonemes) and the sounds denote meaning on their own or by combining with other sounds. It is built on an alphabet comprised of a set of consonants and vowels representing fixed sound values. It differs from the European languages significantly, however, in the way it explicitly delineates individual syllables.

This syllabic nature is a feature shared by all CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) languages, which you will notice immediately from their distinctive block-shaped characters.

Hangul does have a unique feature that separates it from the other CJK languages: it has the simplicity of an alphabetic languages such as English, while at the same time retaining the syllabic feature of the CJK languages. In this regard, we can say it offers the best of both worlds. Hangul's syllabic construction gives it an advantage over non-syllabic scripts in providing more efficient visual representation, while its alphabet system affords it greater flexibility than non-alphabetic scripts.

Here's a summary of basic written language characteristics of these languages.

Hangul jamo (자모) - consonants and vowels

Hangul alphabet has 14 base consonants and 10 base vowels.

In addition, there are 16 consonants and 11 vowels derived from the base set, making the total 51.

While this might look like a large set at first, the number of unique elements the learner has to remember by brute force is under thirty. Overall, one can probably memorize it with more or less the same amount of time it takes to memorize the English alphabet.

The fifty-one consonants and vowels, called jamo (자모 = 자음(consonants) and 모음(vowels)), are presented below with their sounds in roman letters.

Consonant characteristics

As you have seen, the consonants are grouped into the base, double, and composite sets by convention.

The base set comprises the foundational elements from which other group elements are derived.

For consonants, the base set ones may be the initial as well as the final consonant of a syllable. That is to say, they can appear in both of the allowed positions in a syllable.

The double set consists of five elements, ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ and ㅉ, which are the tensed versions of ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅅ, and ㅈ, respectively. Their notation is characterized by doubling of the corresponding base symbol (ㄲ for ㄱ), and their roman letter representations also follow the same doubling of symbol (gg for ㄲ). All double consonants may function as an initial consonant of a syllable, and ㄲ and ㅆ as a final consonant. ㄸ, ㅃ, and ㅉ are not allowed as a final consonant.

The composite set is more restrictive. First, they can only be the final consonant. Second, they are restricted to existing words only, i.e. they can't be used in a newly coined word or name. Their pronunciation is also contextual (varies with what comes before and after them). For these reasons, learners are advised to learn these consonants as they encounter them in real words rather than in isolation.

Phonetic groups

Consonants are also classified into phonetic groups. For example, ㄷ,ㅌ,ㄸ are pronounced with the tongue largely in the same position and shape; their distinction comes from subtly controlling the force and technique of enunciation to create plain (ㄷ), aspirated (ㅌ), and tensed (ㄸ) sounds, as described below. This classification applies to the obstruent (obstructing the flow of air) consonants, as opposed to sonorant (allowing free flow of air) sounds that don't have such characteristics.

The three types of obstruent consonants in Korean are characterized as follows.

The table below shows the consonant clusters together with similar English consonant examples where available. You can hear the sound (with the underlying vowel ㅏ to sound it out) by hovering over (or tapping on a touchscreen) the consonant symbol.

Vowel characteristics

Hangul jamo stroke order

Each hangul jamo (한글 자모) has an established stroke order, with the following underlying rules.

For example, by rule 1, ㄱ and ㄴ are written in a single stroke even though their shape has a horizontal and a vertical segment. Conversely, ㄹ is written in three strokes of a ㄱ-shape at the top, a horizontal line in the middle, and a ㄴ-shape at the bottom.

The above stroke orders are those found through long use over the years to be the most natural and efficient way to write them. Deviating from them is not a good idea as it will lead to bad habits.

The tables below show the stroke order and count of each jamo in animation - hover over an individual element or click the play icon ( ) to see the whole row.

Consonants

hangul consonant stroke order and count
(hover over an item, or click to see all)

	1	1	2	3	3	4	2	1	2	3	2	3	4	3
	2	4	8	4	4
	3	3	4	4	6	7	5	6	7	6	6

Vowels

hangul vowel stroke order and count
(hover over an item, or click to see all)  

	2	3	2	3	2	3	2	3	1	1
	3	4	3	4	4	5	3	4	5	3	2

Memorizing the alphabet

In the same way the English alphabet has a fixed order, hangul jamo primary sets are learned in the rote sequences of 가나다라마바사아자차카타파하 and 아야어여오요우유으이. Repeatedly reciting these phrases out loud is one good way to memorize them quickly.