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In 1895 elementary schools started using Hangul in their textbooks and in 1896 the first newspaper was printed in both Hangul and English.ĭuring the Colonial Rule in 1910 the official language of Korea became Japanese. Western missionaries also promoted Hangul in schools and in 1894 Hangul was adopted for official documents.
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In the 19 th century there was increased Korean nationalism which led to an increase in the use of Hangul. Hangul later saw a revival in the last 16 th century however. Many scholars and aristocrats believed that Hanja was the only legitimate writing system and saw Hangul as a threat to their status.īecause Hangul was so easy to learn and easy to use to spread information the tenth king Yeonsangun banned the study and use of Hangul and banned all documents written in Hangul. Hangul was designed so that even commoners would be able to read and write and as you might imagine this caused problems for the literary elite. In fact, before the invention of Hangul the majority of Koreans were illiterate. Until this point all Korean was written in Chinese characters known as Hanja which were very difficult for common people to read and write. King Sejong decided that the Korean people needed a new alphabet because the Korean language was fundamentally different from Chinese. The Hunmin Jeongeum was published on Octoand that day is celebrated as Hangul Day in South Korea.Īnother document called the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye (translated as the Hunmin Jeong-eum Explanation and Examples) explains how the consonants were designed after the shapes the mouth makes when saying the letters while the vowels were designed after the principles of yin and yang. Translated as “the correct/proper sounds for the instruction of the people”, this document described the brand new Korean alphabet that later became known as Hangul. The most well-known accomplishment of the Hall of Worthies was the Hunmin Jeongeum. They were involved with publishing a lot of scholarly and scientific writings and because of their contribution to Korean culture this time period is widely regarded as the golden age of Korean history. Hangul, the Korean alphabet was a project promoted by Sejong the Great, the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty.ĭuring his reign he set up a group of specially selected scholars called the Hall of Worthies. You can’t have a syllable block starting with a vowel for some reason so instead you have to put the silent character ieung (ㅇ) before the vowel. However things are a little different for characters that start with vowels. These can be either just one vowel or a vowel followed by a consonant. The next type of syllable you’ll encounter in Korean is a syllable that begins with a vowel. Sometimes you write the characters in a vertical stack of three Hangul letters and some times you write two beside each other with the third one below them.Īs you get more familiar with writing the Korean alphabet you’ll start to get a feel for how the letters fit together properly.
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You’ll also notice that these characters are read from left to right and top to bottom. Many Hangul consonants have a different sound if they’re at the start of a syllable and a different sound at the end of a syllable. When writing these 3 character syllables you have to remember to pay attention to the sounds of the consonants. The vowels are just named after the sounds they make like “ah” for the vowelㅏ. The character ㄱ for example is the shape your toungue takes when you make a “g” sound.Įach consonant has its own name. Consonants are based on the shape your mouth makes when you pronounce them while vowels are made from easy to identify horizontal or vertical lines. The shape of each letter is designed after the features of the sounds they represent. The most interesting feature of the Korean Alphabet is the design of the letters. Han (한) means great and Geul (글) means script. The name of the Korean alphabet, Hangul (한글) means great script in Korean. “Han” for example isn’t written as “ㅎㅏㄴ” it’s written as “한” Unlike English however the letters are combined into blocks of usually 2 to 3 characters for each syllable. There are some obsolete characters and combination characters as well but the main alphabet is 40 letters. The Korean alphabet is made up of 19 consonant letters and 21 vowel characters for a total of 40 main letters.
![korean korean](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/C0kWjEYMAfc/maxresdefault.jpg)
The alphabet was created in the year 1443 in the Joseon Dynasty. Hangul is the official alphabet of the Korean language and it’s used in both South and North Korea.