Hangul
The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system for the Korean language. It has gone by a variety of names. It is known as ' in North Korea, Hangul internationally, and ' in South Korea. The script's original name was .
Before Hangul's creation, Korea had been using Hanja since antiquity. As Hanja was poorly suited for representing the Korean language, and because its difficulty contributed to high illiteracy, Joseon king Sejong the Great moved to create Hangul. The script was announced around late 1443 to early 1444 and officially published in 1446 via the text Hunminjeongeum and its companion commentary Hunminjeongeum Haerye. While Hangul saw gradual adoption among both the elite and commoners, it was looked down upon by the elite for centuries. It only began to receive societal acceptance in the late 19th century. It is now the predominant script for Korean in both Koreas and among the Korean diaspora. It is also used to write the Jeju language, and to a limited degree, the Cia-Cia language of Indonesia.
Hangul orthography has changed over time and differs between North and South Korea. Modern Korean language orthographies use 24 basic letters, which are called jamo. These 14 consonants and 10 vowels can be combined to yield 27 additional letters; a total of 51. They are arranged in syllable blocks consisting of an initial consonant, a vowel, and an optional final consonant. The syllables can be arranged in vertical or horizontal rows, although the latter practice has become dominant. Hangul punctuation is now largely similar to Western punctuation, with some differences. Spaces between words or phrases are a modern feature of Hangul.
Hangul letters were designed to be graphically simple, and traditionally consisted of only straight lines, dots, and circles. The shapes of 5 basic consonants are based on those of human speech organs. Most of the other basic consonants, which are considered to correspond to "harsher" sounds than those 5, are derived by adding additional lines to those letters to indicate progressively harsher sounds. There are a number of other hypothesized inspirations for the letter shapes, but these are still debated.
The script has received significant praise from international linguists and historians. It is now a significant point of pride for Korean people.
Names
The Korean alphabet has been referred to by various names since its invention. Its original name was Hunminjeongeum. It shared this name with the manuscript that introduced it.Internationally, the script goes by Hangul. This spelling has been adopted as a word in the English language and is used by organizations like the International Organization for Standardization. Hangul is an ad-hoc romanization of the name South Korea uses for the script; South Korea's preferred Revised Romanization system renders this as Hangeul. The McCune–Reischauer and related romanization systems render this as Hangŭl. Without diacritics, this is rendered as Hangul. The name means script of Han, where Han is one of the names of Korea. The name appeared some time around the early 1910s.
In North Korea, the name Hangul was briefly used until it was replaced by Chosŏn'gŭl in 1949. This is in part due to differing preferences for names of Korea: North Korea refers to the whole of Korea as Chosŏn, while South Korea uses Hanguk.
The script also historically went by a variety of other names, including ŏnmun, panjŏl, and.
Classifications
Hangul is a phonographic script: a writing system where graphemes represent the sounds of a language. It is also an alphabet. The script is often described as "syllabic" because of how its letters are grouped into syllables, although linguist John DeFrancis is skeptical of this. Several linguists have instead argued for calling it an "alphabetic syllabary", "syllabic alphabet", or "alpha-syllabary". While Hangul was originally a more phonemic script, modern Hangul has become more morphophonemic over time.Hangul and mixed script are considered to have a property called ŏnmun ilch'i : tight correspondence between pronunciation and text. By contrast, the Idu and Kugyŏl scripts for writing Korean do not have this property. Pae, Winskel, and Kim argue this property was initially stronger but weakened over time due to changes in the language and script.
Featural script
Some scholars argue that Hangul is what is called a "featural script": a writing system where the shapes of the symbols encode phonological features of the spoken language they represent. The term was coined by Sampson in a 1985 book, wherein he argued Hangul was featural. This argument is largely based on the Haeryes explanations for the derivations of the letter shapes.In a 1989 book, DeFrancis praises Hangul but questions Sampson's classification of Hangul as featural. He argues that Hangul encodes too few features of Korean and that most people literate in Hangul do not actively learn or process the featural principles used to construct the shapes of the letters. In a 1997 book, Chin-Woo Kim rebuts DeFrancis's argument. He argues that DeFrancis relies on a count of Korean's features that is too high, and that other scholars provide lower counts. He also argues that, even if one accepts that most do not learn or perceive Hangul's featural aspects, that does not mean such aspects do not exist. Kim also claims that scholars argue Hangul is not a featural script because it does not neatly abide by Jakobsonian distinctive features. In the same book, linguist Young-Key Kim-Renaud argues against a featural label. She argues it should be considered that the derivation rules are applied to varying quality and that some symbols represent or contribute to multiple significantly different sounds. Kim-Renaud gives the example of the dot: the dot is used as a vowel and a component in other vowels. When used as a component, it does not carry the meaning of the dot vowel. Linguists Pae, Winskel, and Kim argue that the featural designation is difficult to falsify, debatable, and uncertain. Linguists Taylor and Taylor argue that not all of Hangul's letters are derived from articulatory features and their shape communicates little to learners and users of Korean. Linguist Dimitrios Meletis feels that the label is given too much attention, and that the stroke addition rule and philosophical concepts behind the letters are not purely featural.
History
Background
Before the invention of Hangul, Korea had been using Hanja since antiquity. The difficulty of the script limited its use to mostly upper-class people; commoners were largely illiterate. Hanja is not well suited for representing the Korean language; the Chinese and Korean languages are not closely related and differ in significant ways. For example, Classical Chinese uses subject–verb–object word order while Middle Korean uses subject–object–verb word order. Korean pronunciation and ideas could only be indirectly represented.Origin
Due to a lack of records, it is unknown when work on Hangul first began, nor what that process looked like. Joseon king Sejong the Great was responsible for Hangul's creation, and most scholars believe he was significantly personally involved in creating it. Hangul was first introduced, likely in a mostly complete form, to Sejong's court in the 12th month of 1443 of the Korean calendar. Work then began on applying the script and developing official documentation for it. Part of this effort resulted in the creation of Yongbiŏch'ŏn'ga, the first ever piece of Hangul literature.In the 9th month of 1446, Hangul was officially promulgated via the introductory texts Hunminjeongeum and Hunminjeongeum Haerye. The Hunminjeongeum begins with this now famous preface by Sejong:
Critics of Hangul emerged soon after its introduction. They argued that a native Korean script was too far a departure from Chinese civilization, which they insisted Korea should be deferent to in a Confucian manner. Modern historians have argued that elitism and self-interest were other motivators for anti-Hangul elite; literacy in Hanja was then seen as a status symbol and general literacy was seen as potentially harming their social positions.
Spread
While Sejong had attempted to spread Hangul throughout the government and society, his efforts had limited success. Hangul was only rarely used during the 15th century; its use was largely centered in Seoul, among people close to the royal family and court. It only began to spread outside of Seoul in the 16th century. Women and Buddhists were significant early adopters of the script. While Hangul was rarely taught in traditional Confucianist curricula, it was often taught by women in the home.King Yeonsangun persecuted the use of Hangul during the 1504, after learning that criticisms of him had been written in the script. In the 16th century, the government agency Bureau of Interpreters became a significant center for Hangul scholarship, with one of its members Ch'oe Sejin still being revered today for his lasting contributions to the script and Korean linguistics.
Hangul orthography experienced significant changes in the script's early history. Around the time of Hangul's promulgation, an apparent dispute between whether to use a phonemic or morphophonemic orthography resulted in an apparent victory for the morphophonemic faction; among that faction was Sejong himself. A number of letters gradually stopped seeing significant use by the late 16th century, including the base letters ㅿ and ㆆ. By the 17th century, the letters ㅇ and ㆁ had merged into one. for Hangul stopped being used around the 16th century. The chaotic 1592–1598 Imjin War caused significant disruption and inconsistencies to Hangul orthography that persisted and even worsened into the late 19th century.
Hangul popular literature and sijo poetry began to flourish around the 17th century. The landmark novel Hong Gildong jeon was published around the beginning of the century.