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hangul

*disclaimer**: i **don't know korean** and just started learning, so lots of

this could be incorrect. however most of the information i found is stuff i found

around the web that i think is true. regardless, please [contact] me if something

should be updated or is incorrect.

---

below are my notes on hangul, the korean alphabet, and some korean linguistics.

mostly, i'm taking notes to solidify my understanding . there are already lots

of resources online for learning korean and hangul and you should use those -

however, these were patterns that i found helpful to note and write down while

i learned. maybe they will help someone else, too ^__^

---

hangul was created in 1443 by king sejong the great. it was created in order to

specifically combat* illteracy and make reading and writing easier for the

korean people. i think its a beautiful script.

[wikipedia] tells us that modern hangul

orthography uses:

24 basic letters:

* 14 consonant letters (ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ)

* 10 vowel letters (ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ)

27 complex letters formed by combining the basic letters

* 5 tense consonant letters (ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ)

* 11 complex consonant letters (ㄳ ㄵ ㄶ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅄ)

* 11 complex vowel letters (ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅢ)

an alphabet

what does it mean to be an alphabet? our comrade wikipedia says:

an alphabet is a standardized set of basic written symbols or graphemes

(called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. not

all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each

character represents a syllable, for instance, and logographic systems use

characters to represent words, morphemes, or other semantic units.

interestingly, hangul really is an **alphabet** and not a syllabary (like japanese kana).

each character is called a _jamo_.the language also features a number of beautiful design choices:

orthographic symbols are grouped [homorganically] (by place of articulation)
jamo (characters) are grouped into visually distinct morpho-syllabic units

contrastivity

when learning a new language, at least for me, i always try to pay attention to

the aspects of the phonological inventory that *are* contrastive in the target

language, but are not in my native tongue. these are the types of sounds that

are the hardest to hear and master. often you just need to mentally remember to

move your mouth a different way, because the difference itself is very hard to

perceive when first learning.

voicing

in english, we have [minimal pairs]

that utilize consonants that differ in voicing - i.e. compare:

beach, peach
kill, gill

in korean, this voicing isn't contrastive. rather, the voicing aspect comes

about phonotactically, or based on systematic combinations of sounds. in korean,

many consonants are unvoiced unless they occur in the medial position (in the

middle of a word).

aside: this also plays into my hypothesis of why one sees so many different

types of romanization for korean to english in casual contexts - for example,

check out the spellings i've seen for 떡볶이: tteokbokki, ddukbokki, ddeokbokki,

dukbokki or topokki.

aspiration

unlike voicing, which is contrastive in english & determined phonotactically in

korean, aspiration is the inverse. in english, we often determine if a

consonant is aspirated based on whether or not it follows a certain

phonological rule, for example:

voiceless stops ([p], [t], and [k]) are aspirated ([pʰ], [tʰ], and [kʰ]) when

they occur immediately before (no sound in between) a stressed vowel, and

there is no [s] in front of the voiceless stop.

(from [here])

in contrast, korean uses aspiration as a *contrastive* difference. this

contrastive difference, as expected, is also represented orthographically. in

the [IPA] above

(and below) - aspiration is marked by a superscript _h_ like pʰ. generally, we just see the

character getting an extra stroke: ㄱ (plain k sound) becomes ㅋ (aspirated k

sound).

tenseness

korean consonants are *also* contrastive in relation to tenseness. this is extra

hard for english speakers because we do not have the concept of tenseness in

our phonological inventory. i've read various things about how to imagine

pronouncing these, from pretending you are in a pressure chamber, pretending

the consonant is hard to produce, or just tightening your glottis and vocal

folds while pronouncing them. in IPA, tenseness is denoted by two small marks

under the consonant like this: k͈. like aspiration, tenseness is represented as

a distinct character orthographically: in korean, this is represented by a

duplicate character: ㄱ (plain k sound) becomes ㄲ (tense k sound).

consonants

below i've grouped the consonants primarily by [place of

articulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/place_of_articulation) - see

[homorganic] groups. amazingly, you'll see

that the orthographic characters also seem organized by their orthographic

shape! this is one of the beautiful parts of hangul - it was literally designed

to be easy to learn.

velars

these are all [velar] [stops].

we get three variants: plain, aspirated, and tense

|-|-|-|-|

| ㄱ | k | 기역 | giyeok |

| ㄲ | k͈ | 쌍기역 | ssanggiyeok |

| ㅋ | kʰ| 키읔 | kieuk |

alveolars

these are all [alveolar] [stops].

we get three variants: plain, aspirated, and tense

|-|-|-|-|

| ㄷ| t | 디귿 | digeut |

| ㄸ| t͈ | 쌍디귿 | ssangdigeut |

| ㅌ| tʰ| 티읕 | tieut |

after that, we have a new manner of articulation in the same location.

these are all [alveolar] [siblants]:

|-|-|-|-|

| ㅅ | s | 시옷 | siot |

| ㅆ | s͈ | 쌍시옷 | ssangsiot |

| ㅈ | tɕ | 지읒 | jieut |

| ㅊ | tɕ | 치읓 | chieut |

| ㅉ | t͈ɕ | 쌍지읒 | ssangjieut |

in this section , there is a plcae of articulation that doesn't exist in most

english dialects:

[alveolo-palatal].

in order to pronounce this one correctly, we'll need to think about what that

means:

its place of articulation is postalveolar, meaning that the tongue contacts

the roof of the mouth in the area behind the alveolar ridge (the gum line).

its tongue shape is laminal, meaning that it is the tongue blade that

contacts the roof of the mouth. it is heavily palatalized, meaning that the

middle of the tongue is bowed and raised towards the hard palate.

labials

these are all [alveolar] [stops].

we get three variants: plain, aspirated, and tense, as well as a voiced bilabial stop (m).

|-|-|-|-|

| ㅂ | b | 비읍 | bieup |

| ㅃ | p͈ | 쌍비읍 | ssangbieup |

| ㅍ | pʰ | 피읖 | pieup |

| ㅁ | m | 미음 | mieum |

dorsals

these are all [dorsal] consonants.

|-|-|-|-|

ㄹ | ɾ | 리을 | rieul |

ㄴ | n | 니은 | nieun |

ㅎ | h | 히읗 | hieut |

ㅇ | ŋ | 이응 | ieung |

the ㅇ (ieung) character is *extra special* - it can also denote _absence of a sound_.

complex consonants

consonants, when combined, can have different pronunciation based on the

preceding and following consonants. however, the rules are a bit convoluted so i

am not going to add them to my notes for now. note that even if you think you

ran read (i.e. transcribe) a korean word, you may find there are some

differences with pronunciation intervocalic voicing causes many consonants to

become voiced when in the middle of a syllable. for example: 비빔밥 (bibimbap)

is generally romanized with all b characters, but only the middle b is actually

pronounced as a b due to intervocalic voicing. there are lots of examples of this!

a more general rule is that the sounds ㄱ, ㄷ, and ㅂ are transcribed as g, d,

and b before a vowel. they are transcribed as k, t, and p when they appear

before another consonant or as the last sound of a word. despite this rule

listed on [the national institute of korean

language](https://www.korean.go.kr/front_eng/roman/roman_01.do) page on

romanization, common words like kimchi (not gimchi) still get special treatment

since they're at this point, more of a loan word

i'm sure there are a lot more: to learn more, research "korean consonant

assimilation".

vowels

the vowels in hangul are all based on either a vertical, or horizontal line.

there are basic vowels

([monopthongs]) and complex vowels

([diphthongs]).

monopthongs

|-|-|-|-|

| ㅡ | ɯ | eu | ~goose

| ㅗ | o | o | hoe

| ㅜ | u | u | who

| ㅣ | i | i | free

| ㅓ | ʌ | eo | gut

| ㅏ | a | a | bra

there are two more, which orthographically look like two vowels, but are

pronounced as a single vowel. you can see some that where ㅣ (i) is being

re-used:

ㅓ + ㅣ= ㅔ
ㅏ + ㅣ = ㅐ

|-|-|-|-|

| ㅔ | e | e | may

| ㅐ | ɛ | ae | head

historically these last two are pronounced different, but from what i

[read], most people

pronounce them like "eigh" in "weigh".

diphthongs

one group of diphthongs are all ways of turning one vowel into a y- variant

(e.g. a -> ya) - also know as [iotized]

vowels all you need to do is add the extra line next to the existing one that

is protruding, and now its a y sound.

|character|IPA|romanization|

|-|-|-|-|

| ㅑ | ja | ya |

| ㅕ | jʌ | yeo |

| ㅛ | jo | yo |

| ㅠ | ju | yu |

| ㅒ | jɛ | yae |

| ㅖ | je | ye |

here are a few that all share a w-like sound prefix. while they look more

complicated, it can actually be seen that each one is just a combination of

the simpler vowels we already learned. for example:

ㅘ wa = ㅗ o + ㅏ a
ㅙ wae = ㅘ wa + ㅣ i

and so on.

|character|IPA|romanization|

|-|-|-|-|

| ㅟ | ɥi | wi |

| ㅞ | we | we |

| ㅙ | wɛ | wae |

| ㅘ | wa | wa |

| ㅝ | wʌ | wo |

| ㅢ | ɰi | ui |

syllables

now that we know vowels and consonants, we can start adding them together to

make syllables. the morpho-syllabic blocks are made up of three parts:

initial onset consonant: 초성 (choseong)
medial vowel: 중성 (jungseong)
syllable coda: 종성 (jongseong)

when no initial consonant is present, one writes the ㅇ (ieung) (like zero!) -

which means each block has a *minimum* of two letters - a n initial and a

medial. in general - *blocks are read top left to bottom right*

blocks come in a variety of shapes, but not too many: for the following, i will use:

i = initial (choseong)
m = medial (jungseong)
m2 = medial (second part, orthographically)
f = final (jongseong)

the base blocks have two components basically and look like this:

 _____
|     |
|  i  |
|_____|  = 초 (cho) = ㅊ(ch) +  ㅗ (o)
|     |
|  m  |
|_____|


 _________
|    |    |
| i  |  m |  = 가 (ga) = ㄱ (g) + ㅏ (a)
|____|____|

 _________
|    |    |
| i  |    |
|____|    |  =  희 (hui) = ㅎ (h) + ㅢ (ui)
|    | m2 |
| m  |    |
|____|____|

if there a final consonant, it is always on the bottom:


 _____
|     |
|  i  |
|_____|
|     |
|  m  |  = 흈 (hyuss) = ㅎ (h) + ㅡ (yu) + ㅆ (ss)
|_____|
|     |
|  f  |
|_____|


 _________
|    |    |
| i  |  m |
|____|____|
|         |  = 쌍 (ssa) = ㅆ (ss) + ㅏ(a)  + ㅇ (nothing)
|    f    |
|_________|

 _________
|    |    |
| i  |    |
|____|    |
|    | m2 |
| m  |    | =  흭 (huig) = ㅎ (h) + ㅢ (ui) + ㄱ (g)
|____|____|
|         |
|    f    |
|_________|

and sometimes the final part is broken up into two pieces:

 _________
|    |    |
| i  |  m |
|____|____|
|    |    |  = 퍑 (pyalt) = ㅍ (p) + ㅑ (ya) + ㄹ (l) + ㅌ (t)
| f1 | f2 |
|____|____|

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