Hangul

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This article is mainly about the native Korean writing system. See Korean language for details on the Korean spoken language. This article contains Korean text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hangul or hanja.
Hangul (한글) or
Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글)[1]

Type Featural alphabet
Spoken languages Korean
Cia-Cia (as of 2009)[2][3][4]
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.
History of the alphabet







Korean writing systems

Hangul

Hanja

• Hyangchal
• Gugyeol
• Idu

Mixed script

Korean transliteration

• Revised Romanization
• McCune–Reischauer
• Yale
• ISO/TR 11941
• Kontsevich (Cyrillic)

Hangul (pronounced /ˈhɑːŋɡʊl/; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl [haːn.ɡɯl]  ( listen) (in South Korea)) or Chosongul (Korean pronunciation: [ʨosʌnɡɯl]; Korean: 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul (in North Korea)) is the native alphabet of the Korean language, as distinguished from the logographic Sino-Korean hanja system. It was created in the mid-fifteenth century, and is now the official script of both North Korea and South Korea, being co-official in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China. A project is complete to adopt Hangul as the writing system of the Austronesian Cia-Cia language.[2][3][4]

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

Official names

South Korean name
Hangul 한글
Revised Romanization Han(-)geul
McCune-Reischauer Han'gŭl
North Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl 조선글
McCune-Reischauer Chosŏn'gŭl
Revised Romanization Joseon(-)geul

• The modern name Hangul (한글) was coined by Ju Sigyeong in 1912. Han (한) meant "great" in archaic Korean, while geul (글) is the native Korean word for "script". Han could also be understood as the Sino-Korean word 韓 "Korean", so that the name can be read "Korean script" as well as "great script".[5] 한글 is pronounced [hanɡɯl] and has been romanized in the following ways:
  • Hangeul or han-geul in the Revised Romanization of Korean, which the South Korean government uses in all English publications and encourages for all purposes.
  • Han'gŭl in the McCune-Reischauer system. When used as an English word, it is often rendered without the diacritics: hangul, often capitalized as Hangul. This is how it appears in many English dictionaries.
  • Hankul in Yale Romanization, a system recommended for technical linguistic studies.
• North Koreans prefer to call it Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글), for reasons related to the different names of Korea.
• The original name was Hunminjeongeum (훈민정음; 訓民正音; see history). Due to objections to the names Hangeul, Chosŏn'gŭl, and urigeul (우리글) (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

Until the early twentieth century, Hangul was denigrated as vulgar by the literate elite who preferred the traditional hanja writing system.[6] They gave it such names as:

• Eonmun (Hangul: 언문, hanja: 諺文 "vernacular script")[6]
• Amgeul (암글 "women's script"; also written Amkeul 암클).[6] Am (암) is a prefix that signifies a noun is feminine
• Ahaetgeul or Ahaegeul (아햇글 or 아해글 "children's script")
• Achimgeul (아침글 "writing you can learn within a morning")[7]
• Gungmun (Hangul: 국문, hanja: 國文 "national script")

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.

History

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.[8]

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.[6] 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.