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Hangul is the native alphabet used to write the Korean language (as opposed to the Hanja system borrowed from China). For other romanized spellings of "Hangul," please see Names below.
While Hangul writing may appear ideographic to the uninitiated, it is actually phonetic. Each Hangul syllabic block consists of several of the 24 letters ( jamo )—14 consonants and 10 vowels. Historically, the alphabet had 3 more consonants and 1 more vowel (See Obsolete Jamo ). For a table of phonological descriptions of each letters, see Phonology.
1 Names
1.1 Official names
- The modern name Hangul (한글) is a term coined by Ju Si-gyeong in 1912 that means "great script" (in archaic Korean) and "Korean script" (in modern Korean) simultaneously. It cannot be written in Hanja, though the first syllable Han (한), if used in the sense of " Korean," may be written as 韓. It is pronounced [hanɡɯl] ( IPA), and can be Romanized in the following ways:
- Hangeul or "Han-geul" in Revised Romanization of Korean; the Korean government uses this (official) spelling in all their English publications and encourages it for all purposes. Many recent publications have adopted this spelling.
- Han'gul in McCune-Reischauer (often rendered without any diacriticA diacritic mark or accent mark is an additional mark added to a basic letter. The word derives from Greek , distinguishing and diacritical is used to mean distinguishing or distinctive. The mark can be added over, under, or through the letter. But not al: Hangul)
- Hankul in Yale RomanizationThe Yale Romanizations are four systems created during World War II by the United States for its soldiers. They romanize the four East Asian languages of Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean. The four romanizations, however, are unrelated in the sens
- The original name was Hunmin Jeongeum (see #History )
- North KoreaThe Democratic People's Republic of Korea DPRK Korean: Choson Minjujuui Inmin Konghwaguk Hangul: ; Hanja: ), commonly known as North Korea is a country in eastern Asia, covering the northern half of the peninsula of Korea. To the south it borders South Kons prefer to call it Choson'gul (조선글), for reasons related to the different Names of KoreaFor complex historical reasons, there are three names of Korea in use today. In Korean, Korea is referred to as " Choson" (; ) in the North and " Hanguk" (; ) in the South. The western name "Korea" (from Goryeo (; )) is a neutral name often used by both c.
1.2 Alternative names
- Jeongeum, short for the official Hunmin Jeongeum (see #History )
- Urigeul (우리글 "our script") is used in both the North and South, but not by non-Koreans.
Hangul has been occasionally denigrated by those who preferred the traditional Hanja writing at least until the early twentieth century, A.D:
- Eonmun (언문 諺文 "vernacular script").
- Amkeul (암클 "females’ script"): 암 is a prefix to a noun that signifies it is feminine. Women were traditionally considered inferior to men in Korea.
- Ahaegeul (아해글 "children‘s script")
However the use of Hanja in writing has become very rare in the past several decades and those names are considered archaic.
