The Korean alphabet, also known as Hangul,[nb 1] or Chosongul (officially transcribed Han-geul in South Korea andChosŏn'gŭl in North Korea),[nb 2] is the native alphabet of the Korean language.[1] It was created during the Joseon Dynastyin 1443, and is now the official script of both South Korea and North Korea, and co-official in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China's Jilin Province. In South Korea, Hangul is sometimes augmented by Chinese characters, called hanja, whereas in North Korea, hanja is virtually nonexistent.
Hangul is a true alphabet of 24 consonant and vowel letters. However, instead of being written sequentially like the letters of the Latin alphabet, Hangul letters are grouped into blocks, such as 한 han, each of which transcribes a syllable. That is, although the syllable 한 han may look like a single character, it is composed of three letters: ㅎ h, ㅏ a, and ㄴ n. Each syllabic block consists of two to five letters, including at least one consonant and one vowel. These blocks are then arranged horizontally from left to right or vertically from top to bottom. The number of mathematically possible blocks is 11,172, though there are far fewer possible syllables allowed by Korean phonotactics, and not all phonotactically possible syllables occur in actual Korean words. For a phonological description, see Korean phonology.
Official names[edit]
| Hangul | |
|---|---|
| Hangul | 한글 |
| Revised Romanization | Han(-)geul |
| McCune–Reischauer | Han'gŭl |
| Chosŏn'gŭl | |
|---|---|
| Chosŏn'gŭl | 조선글 |
| Hancha | 朝鮮글 |
| McCune–Reischauer | Chosŏn'gŭl |
| Revised Romanization | Joseon(-)geul |
South Korea[edit]
- 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".[2] 한글 is pronounced [hanɡɯl] and has been Romanizedin 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 Korea[edit]
- North Koreans prefer to call it Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글; [tɕosʌnɡɯl]) for reasons related to the different names of Korea or uri kŭlcha (우리 글자; "our characters")[3] as an expression of Korean ethnic nationalism.
Original name of Hunminjeongeum[edit]
- The original name was Hunminjeongeum (훈민정음; 訓民正音; see history). Because of objections to the names Hangeul,Chosŏn'gŭl, and urigeul (우리글) (see below) by Koreans in China, the otherwise uncommon short form jeongeum may be used as a neutral name in some international contexts.
Other names[edit]
Until the early twentieth century, Hangul was denigrated as vulgar by the literate elite who preferred the traditional hanja writing system.[4] They gave it such names as:
- Achimgeul (아침글 "writing you can learn within a morning").[5] Although somewhat pejorative, this was based on the reality, as expressed by Jeong Inji, that "a wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days."[6] In the original hanzi, this is rendered as "故智者不終朝而會，愚者可浹旬而學。"[7]
- Gungmun (Hangul: 국문, hanja: 國文 "national script")
- Eonmun (Hangul: 언문, hanja: 諺文 "vernacular script")[4]
- Amgeul (암글 "women's script"; also written Amkeul 암클).[4] Am (암) is a prefix that signifies a noun is feminine
- Ahaetgeul or Ahaegeul (아햇글 or 아해글 "children's 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.
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