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.

Hangul did not become the script for Korean overnight. For several centuries, it was treated as an inferior script for under-educated commoners by the elite who favored hanja. It firmly took hold by the turn of the 20th century, however, and became dominant by mid-century. It was really in the 1970s and 80s that hangul was officially made the exclusive script for Korean. Nowadays practically everything is written in hangul, with hanja occasionally co-opted (usually put in parentheses) in highly technical texts as an disambiguation aid.

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.

Features of hangul as compared with English, Chinese, and Japanese  
language

alphabetic, syllabic, and other features

English
(phonogram)

  • alphabetic - a small set of elements represent sounds, which correspond to meaning units.
  • e.g. b-o-o-k makes the sound , which denotes the idea of a book.
  • The alphabet is easy, and words are relatively easy to construct if you know the sound.
  • English writing however does not mark syllable boundaries.

Chinese
(pictogram)
(ideogram)
(logogram)

  • not alphabetic, but syllabic - most characters are constructed by combining one or more smaller components, but there is no well defined rule for composition.
  • e.g. has sub-components ,,, arranged in an arbitrary way.
  • Characters are numerous. One must know thousands of complex characters by heart.

Japanese kanas
(phonogram)

  • non-alphabetic syllabary - syllables are the smallest indivisible units, which correspond to phonemes, limiting the number of expressible sounds.
  • e.g. あさ breaks down to and , phonemic syllables not further divisible.
  • It works well only because Japanese has a rather small set of distinct phonemes.

Korean
(phonogram)

  • alphabetic in a similar way as other alphabetic languages.
  • syllabic - elements combine systematically into syllables following a simple rule.
  • e.g. 아침 is made of divisible syllables (+) and (++).
  • The alphabet is easy to learn. Syllables are clearly delineated as in Japanese and Chinese.

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.

The sound values given in roman letters below are just best approximations. In many cases, such as between and g, the two sounds are not quite close enough to be considered the same. At this point, the correlation of which is which is important, and the detail will be covered in a later chapter.

Consonants

base
(14)

g n d

l/r

m b s ng j ch k t p h

double
(5)










gg
dd

bb ss
jj




compo
site
(11)




gs nj lh lg lm lb ls lt lp lh bs


Vowels

base
(10)


a ya eo yeo o yo u yu eu i

compo
site
(11)

ae yae e ye wa wae oe wo we wi ui

   

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.

As you will see, a syllable in Korean always has a starting consonant, called the initial (or start) consonant, then a vowel, and may optionally end with a final (or end) consonant. For instance, (, , ) has both initial and final consonants, whereas (, ) doesn't have a final consonant.

The double set consists of five elements, , , , and , which are the tensed versions of , , , , and , respectively. Their notation is characterized by doubling of the corresponding base symbol ( for ), and their roman letter representations also follow the same doubling of symbol (gg for ). All double consonants may function as an initial consonant of a syllable, and and as a final consonant. , , and 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, ,, 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 (), aspirated (), and tensed () 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.

  • plain: , , , . Unlike their English counterparts g, d, b, j, these are not voiced (i.e. involves a slight vibration of the vocal chord, unlike unvoiced consonants which are sounded entirely in the mouth cavity) in the most distinctive cases. That is, in the beginning of a word where they receive emphasis, , , , are pronounced unvoiced and mildly aspirated (i.e. has the sharp puffing of air as in the h sound), somewhat like English k, t, p, ch; when they come after another syllable in the same word, they become softer and degenerate into the voiced consonant g, d, b, j.
  • aspirated: , , , . These have aspirated sounds (i.e. they have the sharp puffing of air) which are similar to English k, t, p, ch.
  • tensed: , , , , . These are unaspirated, hardened sounds with no matching sounds in English. One may get a taste of them from the English k, t, and p when they come after s, as in sky, stout, and spar. For instance, the first t in stout is sounded with much less aspiration than the normal t in tout. It is because the lips and tongue are initially in near closed position to pronounce the sibilant s, and this has the effect of strengthening the subsequent consonant t when the lips open up to pronounce it, leading to a less aspirated but hardened sound. is similar but the effect is more amplified. You also see similar sounds in other European languages, like French Paris and Spanish quando, so you might think of tenseness of as an extreme version of the French p, that of of Spanish q, and the like.

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.

※ pronunciation is by Naver Papago
(https://papago.naver.com)
group consonant type

similar sound in English

g plain

gown, gleam (approxmate)

k aspirated

count, cream

gg tensed

scout, scream (approximate)

n

now, noon

d plain

doubt, dear (approximate)

t aspirated

tout, tier

dd tensed

stout, steer (approximate)

l

low, blast

r

bright, proud

m

mind, mean

b plain

bit, bound (approximate)

p aspirated

pit, pound

bb tensed

spit, spout (approximate)

s plain

strong, sting (soft s, approximate)

ss tensed

sound, sing (hard s, approximate)


mute
ng

/ng/

young, sing

j plain

jack, juice (approximate)

ch aspirated

check, choice

jj tensed

(not available)

h

hot, high

Note

  1. can sound like l or r depending on its phonetic context.
  2. has two distinct cases: 1) mute when at the start of a syllable (e.g. , ), 2) the /ng/ sound when at the end (e.g. ). (We will use enclosing slashes // for IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) notation.)

To recap,

  • , , , ,, , , , and represent distinct sounds, some of which form obstruent consonant clusters.
  • In obstruent consonant clusters, there is an aspirated (,,,) and tensed version (,,,,).
  • Aspiration of a consonants is indicated by an additional short stroke to the base one (e.g. vs ).
  • Tensing of a consonant is indicated by doubling of the base one (e.g. vs ).  

Vowel characteristics

The vowels are conventionally grouped into the base and composite sets.

The base set (,,,,,,,,,) represents the foundational vowels, and the composite set is derived from the base set.

Of the base set, , , , , , and constitute the fundamental, distinct vowels, while , , , and are variants of , , , and , respectively. Elements in the former group are diphthongs (two-part vowels with smooth, gliding transition betwene them) with an initial /j/ (English y) component added to elements in the latter.


Vowels in the composite set are created by combining two or three vowels in the base set.

and in the composite set are monophthongs (single indivisible sound) dispite the fact that they ㅏ and ㅓ with ㅣ tacked on at the end, whereas ㅒ and ㅖ are diphthongs with an initial /j/ addeded to and , respectively.

, , are based on , and , , on , all of them diphthongs with an initial /w/ sound ( might be a minor deviation). For instance, is a combination of and , as the shape suggests. Note, howver, that composite vowels are every bit as unique and indivisible as the base ones, their composition notwithstanding.

Unlike the consonants, the two-group classification of vowels is largely just a convention. They are not treated any differently in acutal use.

The table below shows each vowel's sound and the make-up of diphthongs, together with examples of matching English vowels. Again, hover over or tap the vowel symbols (where available) to hear their sounds.

※ pronunciation is by Naver Papago
(https://papago.naver.com)
group vowel makeup

similar sound in English

a

arm, star (approximate)

ae

+

apple, arrow (approximate)

ya

yah (like German ja)

yae

+

yap, yack approximate)

eo

heard, pearl (approximate)

e

+

end, tread

yeo

yearn

ye

+

yes, yell

o

oh, (with no trailing /u/ sound)

wa

+

wand

wae

+

wag, waggon (North American)

oe

+

* similar to ㅞ (/we/)

yo

yo (with no trailing /u/ sound)

u

poor, ooze

wo

+

work ,swirl

we

+

west, dwell

wi

+

will, twin

yu

you, abuse

eu

look, brook

ui

+

(not available)

i

eat, peace

To recap,

  • Doubled short strokes in ,,, represent an initial /j/ (y in English) sound added to the corresponding ,,,.
  • Composite vowels are made up of multiple base vowels, and their sounds generally (but not always obviously) draw from the constituent vowels. For instance, has a component with the /w/ sound and with the /e/ sound, which combine to produce the /we/ sound.  

Hangul jamo stroke order

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

  1. A stroke means the trace you make on paper without lifting the pen.
  2. Each stroke goes from top to bottom and left to right. (The circle in and , and the slant lines in , , , , are minor exceptions to this.)

For example, by rule 1, and are written in a single stroke even though their shape has a horizontal and a vertical segment. Conversely, 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.

Symbols in these tables are presented in stick diagrams instead of the usual fonts. In some cases, as in , and , these simplified shapes more closely reflect how people write them by hand.

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.

※ pronunciation is by Google Translate (http://translate.google.com)  

 





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