25 Facts About Korean alphabet

1.

Korean alphabet, known as Hangul in South Korea and Choson'gul in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language.

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2.

Four basic letters in the original Korean alphabet are no longer used: 1 vowel letter and 3 consonant letters.

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3.

However, Korean alphabet is typically written from left to right with spaces between words serving as dividers, unlike in Japanese and Chinese.

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4.

Korean alphabet was originally named Hunminjeong'eum by King Sejong the Great in 1443.

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5.

Until the mid-20th century, the Korean alphabet elite preferred to write using Chinese characters called Hanja.

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6.

Supporters of the Korean alphabet referred to it as jeong'eum meaning correct pronunciation, gungmun meaning national script, and eonmun meaning vernacular script.

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7.

Korean alphabet was designed so that people with little education could learn to read and write.

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8.

Korean alphabet faced opposition in the 1440s by the literary elite, including Choe Manri and other Korean Confucian scholars.

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9.

However, the Korean alphabet entered popular culture as King Sejong had intended, used especially by women and writers of popular fiction.

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10.

However, the use of the Korean alphabet had gone without orthographical standardization for so long that spelling had become quite irregular.

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11.

However, the Korean alphabet was still taught in Korean-established schools built after the annexation and Korean was written in a mixed Hanja-Hangul script, where most lexical roots were written in Hanja and grammatical forms in the Korean alphabet.

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12.

Orthography of the Korean alphabet was partially standardized in 1912, when the vowel arae-a —which has now disappeared from Korean—was restricted to Sino-Korean roots: the emphatic consonants were standardized to and final consonants restricted to.

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13.

Definitive modern Korean alphabet orthography was published in 1946, just after Korean independence from Japanese rule.

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14.

All Korean alphabet obstruents are voiceless in that the larynx does not vibrate when producing those sounds and are further distinguished by degree of aspiration and tenseness.

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15.

Consonants in the Korean alphabet can be combined into one of 11 consonant clusters, which always appear in the final position in a syllable block.

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16.

Actual phonological studies done by studying formant data show that current speakers of Standard Korean alphabet do not differentiate between the vowels ? and ? in pronunciation.

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17.

Alphabetic order in the Korean alphabet is called the ganada order, after the first three letters of the alphabet.

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18.

Letters in the Korean alphabet have adopted certain rules of Chinese calligraphy, although and use a circle, which is not used in printed Chinese characters.

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19.

Beside the letters, the Korean alphabet originally employed diacritic marks to indicate pitch accent.

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20.

Korean alphabet believed that the role of 'Phags-pa script in the creation of the Korean alphabet was quite limited, stating it should not be assumed that Hangul was derived from 'Phags-pa script based on his theory:.

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21.

Ledyard posits that five of the Korean alphabet letters have shapes inspired by 'Phags-pa; a sixth basic letter, the null initial, was invented by Sejong.

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22.

Hangul supremacy or Hangul scientific supremacy is a claim that the Hangul Korean alphabet, invented by King Sejong the Great in 1443, is the simplest and most logical writing system in the world.

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23.

Some Korean alphabet sounds represented by these obsolete letters still exist in dialects.

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24.

The guiding text for orthography of the Korean alphabet is called Hangeul Matchumbeop, whose last South Korean revision was published in 1988 by the Ministry of Education.

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25.

In Hunmin Jeongeum, the Korean alphabet was printed in sans-serif angular lines of even thickness.

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