Korean Alphabet (1) - Hangul

What is Hangul?

Hangul is a Korean Alphabet and made by King Sejong who is the 4th king of the Chosun Dynasty. Hangul consists of 24 letters, 14 consonants, 10 vowels. We could easily distinguish the consonants and vowels of Hangul.

 

14 (basic) Consonants of Hangul(upper side: the character, downside: the name of the character)

ㄱ	ㄴ	ㄷ	ㄹ	ㅁ	ㅂ	ㅅ	ㅇ	ㅈ	ㅊ
기역	니은	디귿	리을	미음	비읍	시옷	이응	지읒	치읓

ㅋ	ㅌ	ㅍ	ㅎ
키읔	티읕	피읖	히읗

 

10 (basic) vowels of Hangul

ㅏ	ㅑ	ㅓ	ㅕ	ㅗ	ㅛ	ㅜ	ㅠ	ㅡ	ㅣ
아	야	어	여	오	요	우	유	으	이

 

The combinations of these basic letters you can make more complex letters which is also a member of Hangul. Such as ㄱ + ㄱ = ㄲ, ㅏ+ㅣ = ㅐ and so on. We will talk this after we talk about the writing system of Hangul since the writing system is closely related to complex letters.

 

The writing system of Hangul.

When we write with Hangul, we put some letters together based on "syllable". Syllable is a linguistic term which means a unit of Phonetics. I think it'll take pretty much time to explain the pure meaning of syllable and its usage. So I'll just say ,in this part, that a syllable consists of consonant, a vowel, and consonant(s) series. The first consonant or the last consonant(s) (or both) can be omitted. 

 

For example, ㄱ(consonant) + ㅏ(vowel) is one syllable. "ㅏ + ㄹ", "ㄱ + ㅏ + ㄴ" is also one syllable. Just one vowel, "ㅗ" is one syllable either. Before we put the letters together, there's one thing that you should notice. If there's no consonant before vowel in a syllable, we don't write only with the vowel, we fill the space with 'o(이응)' which has no phonetic value(sound) in the starting position(onset) in a syllable. I'll show you how this works in the next section. ^[각주:1]

 

Now let's put the letters together and see how it goes. These are the examples I mentioned above.

 

ㄱ + ㅏ = 가

ㅏ + ㄹ = 알 (*notice that the 'ㅇ' is inserted.)

ㄱ + ㅏ + ㄴ = 간

ㅗ = 오 (*notice that the 'ㅇ' is inserted.)

 

complex consonants and vowels of Hangul

 

We could make more combinations with complex consonants of Hangul. I'll show you the list of complex letters. 

 

(double) consonants ^[각주:2]

 

ㄲ(ㄱ+ㄱ)	ㄸ(ㄷ+ㄷ)	ㅃ(ㅂ+ㅂ)	ㅆ(ㅅ+ㅅ)	ㅉ(ㅈ+ㅈ)
쌍기역 [각주:3]	쌍디귿	쌍비읍	쌍시옷	쌍지읒

 

Notice that 'ㄸ', 'ㅃ', 'ㅉ' cannot come to the last consonant of a syllable. Plus, when you want to type these letters on korean keyboard, we use combination of "shift + single letter(ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅈ)".

 

complex vowels

ㅐ	ㅒ	ㅔ	ㅖ	ㅘ	ㅙ	ㅚ	ㅝ	ㅚ	ㅟ
애	얘	에	예	와	왜	외	워	외	위

ㅢ

의

complex consonants (in this case, these consonants only comes the last place of a syllable. I mean, '종성' position)

ㄳ

ㄵ

ㄶ

ㄺ

ㄻ

ㄼ

ㄽ

ㄾ

ㄿ

ㅀ

ㅄ

Some examples with complex letters.

 

깍두기(Radish kimchi)

애기(baby)

얘기(story)

외우다(memorize)

앉다(sit)

여덟(eight)

 

*You can practice your Hangul typing skill on this page: https://www.branah.com/korean

 

Next time, I'll write about the pronunciation of Hangul! I really want this article helps you to understand Hangul and Korean!

 

 

 

* If you write a comment about your name, then I will transcribe it to Hangul form!!

* If you have any questions or find any errors please write a comment or you could also send an e-mail to me.

* e-mail address: skyjw1211@gmail.com

 

1. In Korean, we call the first consonant as '초성(choseong)', the vowel as '중성(jungseong)' and the last consonant(s) as '종성(jongseong)'. [본문으로]
2. In terms of the letter, The letters above are composed of 2 basic letter. But actually, the sound is not considered as a comlex sound. I mean they are not the letters which represent the consonant cluster but just a single consonant. In this part, I considered them as complex consonants because they are composed of more than one basic letter. [본문으로]
3. '쌍(ssang)' means double. [본문으로]