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Hangeul




Hangul also refers to a Word Processing application widely used in Korea.


Hangul ( of the Korean Language , as opposed to the non-alphabetic Hanja system borrowed from China .

While Hangul may look like s and 10 Vowel s. Historically, the alphabet had several additional letters ''(see Obsolete Jamo )''. For a phonological description of the letters, see '' Korean Phonology ''.


NAMES


Official names

  • The modern name ''Hangul'' (한글) is a term coined by Ju Si-gyeong in 1912 that simultaneously means "great script" in archaic Korean and "Korean script" in modern Korean. It cannot be written in Hanja , though the first syllable, ''han'' (한), if used in the sense of the word " Korea n", may be written 韓. The syllable 글 is believed to have evolved from 契, but is never written like that, as it has been naturalized. 한글 is pronounced and would be Romanize d in one of the following ways:

  • --- Hangeul or ''Han-geul'' in the Revised Romanization Of Korean , which the South Korea n government uses in all English publications and encourages for all purposes. Many recent publications have adopted this spelling.

  • --- Han'gŭl in the older McCune-Reischauer system. When used as an English word, it is rendered without the Diacritic s: ''Hangul,'' or sometimes without capitalization: ''hangul''. This is how it appears in many English dictionaries.

  • --- Hankul in Yale Romanization , another common system in English dictionaries.

  • North Korea ns prefer to call it ''Chosŏn'gŭl'' (조선글), for reasons related to the different Names Of Korea .

  • The original name was ''Hunmin Jeong-eum'' (훈민정음; 訓民正音; see '' History ).'' Due to objections to the names ''Hangeul,'' ''Chosŏn'gŭl,'' and ''Urigeul'' (see below) by the Korean minority in Manchuria , the otherwise uncommon short form Jeongeum may be used as a neutral name in some international contexts.



Other names

  • ''Urigeul / Uri kŭl'' (우리 글) "our script" is used in both North and South Korea.


Until the early twentieth century, Hangul was denigrated as vulgar by the literate elite who preferred the traditional Hanja writing system. They gave it such names as:
  • ''Eonmun'' (언문 諺文 "vernacular script").

  • ''Amkeul'' (암클 "women's script"). 암-(probably derived from 陰 '' Yin )'' is a prefix that signifies a noun is feminine.

  • ''Ahae(t)geul'' (아햇글 or 아해글 "children's script").


However, these names are now archaic, as the use of hanja in writing has become rare in South Korea and completely phased out in North Korea.


HISTORY


Hangul was promulgated by the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty , Sejong The Great . Some suspect that such a complex project must have been developed by a team of researchers, and there appear to have been several people involved, but records show that his staff of scholars denounced the king for not having consulted with them. King Sejong and his team may have worked in secret because of the opposition by the educated elite.

Another view is that Hangul was invented by a Buddhist monk Syol Chong. At that time, Buddhist literature was widely read and Siddham and Tibetan scripts were widely known to the Buddhist monks, both derived from ancient Indian Brahmi . Hangul is very phonetic, just like Indian scripts. The shapes of the letters were however independently invented, although some may seem to resemble Devanagari .

The project was completed in late 1443 or early 1444, and published in 1446 in a document entitled '' Hunmin Jeong-eum '' "The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People", after which the alphabet itself was named. The publication date of the ''Hunmin Jeong-eum,'' October 9 , is Hangul Day in South Korea . Its North Korea n equivalent is on January 15 .

It had been rumored that King Sejong visualized the written characters after studying an intricate lattice, but this speculation was put to rest by the discovery in 1940 of the 1446 '' Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye '' "Explanations and Examples of the ''Hunmin Jeong-eum".'' 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 .

King Sejong explained that he created the new script because the Korean language was different from Chinese; using Chinese characters to write in Chinese was difficult for the common people to learn. At that time, only male members of the aristocracy ''( Yangban )'' learned to read and write, and most Koreans were effectively illiterate. Hangul faced heavy opposition by the literate elite, who believed hanja to be the only legitimate writing system. The protest by Choe Manri and other Confucian scholars in 1444 is a typical example.

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

In late 19th century, Korean nationalism increased as Japan attempted to sever Korea from China's sphere of influence. Hangul came to be considered a national symbol by some reformists. As a result of the of 29 October 1933 . In 1940 a system for expressing foreign orthographies in Hangul was published. During this period Korean was written in a mixed hanja-Hangul script modeled after Japan's mixed kanji-kana system, where lexical roots were written in hanja and grammatical forms in Hangul.

Since regaining independence from Japan in 1945, Korea has used Hangul as its official writing system, with ever decreasing use of the mixed system. Today it is uncommon to find hanja mixed in with normal writing, though newspapers still use hanja to avoid ambiguity, especially in headlines.


''JAMO''

See Also: Hangul consonant and vowel tables


''Jamo'' (자모; 字母 ) or ''nassori'' (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 Letter s 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 Consonant s ''(ja-eum'' 자음, 子音 "child sounds") and ten are Vowel s ''(mo-eum'' 모음, 母音 "mother sounds"). Five of the simple consonant letters are doubled to form the five tense consonants (see below), while another eleven clusters are formed of two different consonant letters. The ten vowel ''jamo'' can be combined to form eleven Diphthong s. Here is a summary:

  • 14 simple Consonant letters: ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂㅅㅇㅈㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ, plus obsolete ㅿㆁㆆㅱㅸㆄ

  • 5 double letters: ㄲㄸㅃㅆㅉ, plus obsolete ㅥㆀㆅㅹ

  • 11 Consonant Cluster s: ㄳㄵㄶㄺㄻㄼㄽㄾㄿㅀㅄ, plus obsolete ㅦㅧㅨㅪㅬㅭㅮㅯㅰㅲㅳㅶㅷㅺㅻㅼㅽㅾㆂㆃ, and obsolete triple clusters ㅩㅫㅴㅵ


  • 6 simple Vowel letters: ㅏㅓㅗㅜㅡㅣ, plus obsolete ㆍ

  • 4 simple Iotized vowel letters: ㅑㅕㅛㅠ

  • 11 Diphthong s: ㅐㅒㅔㅖㅘㅙㅚㅝㅞㅟㅢ, plus obsolete ㆎㆇㆈㆉㆊㆋㆌ


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 a "featural" script. Scripts may transcribe languages at the level of Morpheme s ( Logographic Scripts like '' Hanja ),'' of Syllable s (syllabic scripts like '' Kana ),'' or of Segment s ( Alphabet ic scripts like the one you're reading here). Hangul goes one step further, using distinct strokes to indicate Distinctive Feature s 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 Umlaut for vowels.

For instance, the consonant ''jamo'' ㅌ ''t'' 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, ᇰ and ᇢ, have dual pronunciations, and appear to be composed of two elements, stacked one over the other, to represent these two pronunciations: /silence for ᇰ and / for obsolete ᇢ.

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 the modern ''jamo,'' an additional vertical stroke indicates Umlaut , deriving ㅐ , ㅔ , ㅚ , ㅟ from ㅏ , ㅓ , ㅗ , ㅜ . However, this is not part of the intentional design of the script, but rather a natural development from what were originally Diphthong s ending in the vowel ㅣ . Indeed, in many Korean Dialects , including the standard Dialect Of Seoul , some of these may still be diphthongs.

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

Beside the ''jamo,'' Hangul originally employed was and still is phonemic in Korean, it was never indicated in Hangul, except that syllables with rising pitch (:) necessarily had long vowels.

Although some aspects of Hangul reflect a shared history with the ''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 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.

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

  • Velar Consonant s (아음, 牙音 ''a-eum'' "molar sounds")

  • --- ㄱ ''g'' , ㅋ ''k''

  • --- Basic shape: ㄱ is a side view of the back of the tongue raised toward the velum (soft palate). (For illustration, access the external link below.) ㅋ is derived from ㄱ with a stroke for the burst of aspiration.

  • Coronal Consonant s (설음, 舌音 ''seol-eum'' "lingual sounds"):

  • --- ㄴ ''n'' , ㄷ ''d'' , ㅌ ''t'' , ㄹ ''r, l''

  • --- Basic shape: ㄴ is a side view of the tip of the tongue raised toward the Alveolar Ridge (gum ridge). The letters derived from ㄴ are pronounced with the same basic articulation. The line topping ㄷ represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The middle stroke of ㅌ represents the burst of aspiration. The top of ㄹ represents a Flap of the tongue.

  • Bilabial Consonant s (순음, 唇音 ''sun-eum'' "labial sounds"):

  • --- ㅁ ''m'' , ㅂ ''b'' , ㅍ ''p''

  • --- Basic shape: ㅁ represents the outline of the lips in contact with each other. The top of ㅂ represents the release burst of the ''b''. The top stroke of ㅍ is for the burst of aspiration.

  • Sibilant s (치음, 齒音 ''chieum'' "dental sounds"):

  • --- ㅅ s , ㅈ j , ㅊ ch

  • --- Basic shape: ㅅ was originally shaped like a wedge ʌ, without the Serif on top. It represents a side view of the teeth. The line topping ㅈ represents firm contact with the roof of the mouth. The stroke topping ㅊ represents an additional burst of aspiration.

  • Glottal Consonant s (후음, 喉音 ''hueum'' "throat sounds"):

  • --- ㅇ ''ng'' , ㅎ ''h''

  • --- Basic shape: ㅇ is an outline of the throat. Originally ㅇ was two letters, a simple circle for silence (null consonant), and a circle topped by a verticle line, ㆁ, for the nasal ''ng''. A now obsolete letter, ㆆ, represented a Glottal Stop , which is pronounced in the throat and had closure represented by the top line, like ㄱㄷㅈ. Derived from ㆆ is ㅎ, in which the extra stroke represents a burst of aspiration.


The phonetic theory inherent in the derivation of glottal stop ㆆ and aspirate ㅎ from the null 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 {Link without Title} 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:
  • 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.


Dots (now short strokes) were added to these three basic elements to derive the simple vowel ''jamo:''
  • Simple vowels

  • --- Horizontal letters: these are mid-high back vowels.


  • -- light ㅗ ''o''


  • -- dark ㅜ ''u''


  • -- dark ㅡ ''eu'' (''ŭ'')

  • --- Vertical letters: these were once low or front vowels. (ㅓ ''eo'' has since migrated to the back of the mouth.)


  • -- light ㅏ ''a''


  • -- dark ㅓ ''eo'' (''ŏ'')


  • -- neutral ㅣ ''i''

  • Compound ''jamo''. Hangul never had a ''w'', except for Sino-Korean Etymology . Since an ''o'' or ''u'' before an ''a'' or ''eo'' became a sound, and occurred nowhere else, could always be analyzed as a Phonemic ''o'' or ''u,'' and no letter for was needed. However, vowel harmony is observed: ''yin'' ㅜ with ''yin'' ㅓ for ㅝ ''wo;'' ''yang'' ㅏ with ''yang'' ㅗ for ㅘ ''wa:''

  • --- ㅘ = ㅗ + ㅏ

  • --- ㅝ = ㅜ + ㅓ

  • --- ㅙ = ㅗ + ㅐ

  • --- ㅞ = ㅜ + ㅔ


The compound ''jamo'' ending in ㅣ ''i'' were originally Diphthong s. However, several have since evolved into pure vowels:
  • --- ㅐ = ㅏ + ㅣ

  • --- ㅔ = ㅓ + ㅣ

  • --- ㅙ = ㅘ + ㅣ

  • --- ㅚ = ㅗ + ㅣ

  • --- ㅞ = ㅝ + ㅣ

  • --- ㅟ = ㅜ + ㅣ

  • --- ㅢ = ㅡ + ㅣ


  • Iotized vowels: There is no ''jamo'' for Roman ''y'' before a vowel. Instead, this sound is indicated by doubling the stroke attached to the base line 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: ㅕㅑㅠㅛ. The three vowels which could not be iotated were written with a single stroke: ㅡㆍㅣ.


The simple iotated vowels are,
  • --- ㅑ from ㅏ

  • --- ㅕ from ㅓ

  • --- ㅛ from ㅗ

  • --- ㅠ from ㅜ

  • There are also two iotated diphthongs,

  • --- ㅒ from ㅐ

  • --- ㅖ from ㅔ


The Korean language of the 15th century had Vowel Harmony to a greater extent than it does today. Vowels in grammatical Morpheme s 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 , respectively; others as . However, the horizontal ''jamo'' ㅡㅜㅗ do all appear to have been mid to high Back Vowel s, , and thus to have formed a coherent group phonetically.


Ledyard's theory of consonant ''jamo'' design

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Blocks are always written in phonetic order, initial-medial-final. Therefore,

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

Not including obsolete ''jamo,'' there are 11 172 possible Hangul blocks.


Linear Hangul

There was a minor movement in the Twentieth Century to abolish syllabic blocks and write the ''jamo'' individually and in a row, in the fashion of the Western alphabets: ㄱㅡㄴ ''geun''.


ORTHOGRAPHY

Until the 20th century, no official orthography of Hangul had been established. Due to liaison, heavy consonant assimilation, dialectical variants and other reasons, a Korean word can potentially be spelled in various ways. King Sejong seemed to prefer Morphophonemic spelling (representing the underlying morphology) rather than a Phonemic one (representing the actual sounds). However, early in its history, Hangul was dominated by phonemic spelling. Over the centuries the orthography became partially morphophonemic, first in nouns, and later in verbs. Today it is as morphophonemic as is practical.


a person who cannot do it


:

:
Morpheme-by-morpheme Gloss :

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

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

The Hangul Society , originally founded by Ju Si-gyeong , announced a proposal for a new, strongly morphophonemic orthography in 1933, which became the prototype of the contemporary orthographies in both North and South Korea. After Korea was divided, the North and South revised orthographies separately. The guiding text for Hangul orthography is the called the '' Hangeul Machumbeop ,'' whose last South Korean revision was published in 1988 by the Ministry of Education.


Mixed scripts

During the Japanese colonial era, ''hanja'' were used for lexical (noun and verb) roots, and Hangul for grammatical words and inflections, much as ''kanji'' and ''kana'' are used in Japanese. However, ''hanja'' have been almost entirely phased out of daily use in North Korea, and in South Korea they are now mostly restricted to parenthetical glosses for proper names and for disambiguating homonyms.

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

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


STYLE

Hangul may be written either vertically or horizontally. The traditional direction is the Chinese style of writing top to bottom, right to left. Horizontal writing in the style of the Roman alphabet was promoted by Ju Si-gyeong , and has become overwhelmingly preferred.

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

Over the centuries, an ink-brush style of Calligraphy developed, employing the same style of lines and angles as Chinese calligraphy. This brush style is called ''Gungche''(궁체), which means "Palace Style" because the style was mostly developed and used by the ladies of the court in Joseon dynasty.

Modern styles that are more suited for printed media were developed in the 20th Century , which were more or less influenced by Japanese typefaces, the serifed ''Myeongjo'' (derived from Japanese Minchō ) and Sans-serif ''Gothic'' (from Japanese Gothic ) being the foremost examples. Variations of these styles are widely used today in books, newspapers, and magazines, and several computer Fonts . In 1993 , new names for both Myeongjo and Gothic styles were introduced when Ministry of Culture initiated an effort to standardize typographic terms, and the names ''Batang''(바탕, meaning "foundation" or "ground") and ''Dotum''(돋움, meaning "mount" or "stand out") replaced Myeongjo and Gothic respectively. These names are used in Microsoft Windows also.

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'' (ᆼ) of such fonts usually lacks a Serif that could be mistaken for the ㅜ ''(u) jamo'''s short vertical line.


SEE ALSO



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