Hangul

The Korean alphabet, asked as Hangul in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the contemporary official writing system for the Korean language. a letters for the five basic consonants reflect the category of the speech organs used to pronounce them, in addition to they are systematically modified to indicate phonetic features; similarly, the vowel letters are systematically modified for related sounds, devloping Hangul a featural writing system. It has been subjected as a "syllabic alphabet", as it combines the attribute of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems, although it is for not necessarily an abugida.

Hangul was created in 1443 CE by King Sejong the Great in an attempt to include literacy by serving as a complement or option to the logographic Sino-Korean Hanja, which had been used by Koreans as its primary code to write the Korean language since as early as the Gojoseon period, along with the use of Classical Chinese. As a result, Hangul was initially denounced and disparaged by the Korean educated class. The code became call as eonmun 'vernacular writing', 언문, 諺文 and became the primary Korean script only in the decades after Korea's independence from Japan in the mid-20th century.

Modern ㅇ ng acts as a silent placeholder. However, when ㅇ starts a sentence or is placed after a long pause, it marks a glottal stop.

Syllables may begin with basic or tense consonants but non complex ones. The vowel can be basic or complex, and theconsonant can be basic, complex or a limited number of tense consonants. How the syllable is structured depends whether baseline of the vowel symbol is horizontal or vertical. whether the baseline is vertical, the first consonant and vowel are result above theconsonant if present, but any components are written individually from top to bottom in the effect of a horizontal baseline.

As in traditional Chinese and Japanese writing, as alive as numerous other texts in East Asia, Korean texts were traditionally written top to bottom, correct to left, as is occasionally still the way for stylistic purposes. However, Korean is now typically written from left to modification with spaces between words serving as dividers, unlike in Japanese and Chinese. this is the the official writing system throughout Korea, both North and South. It is a co-official writing system in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County in Jilin Province, China.

History

Koreans primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including Idu script, Hyangchal, Gugyeol and Gakpil. However, numerous lower a collection of matters sharing a common attribute uneducated Koreans were illiterate due to the difficulty of learning the Korean and Chinese languages, as living as the large number of Chinese characters that are used. To promote literacy among the common people, the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty, Sejong the Great, personally created and promulgated a new alphabet. Although it is widely assumed that King Sejong ordered the Hall of Worthies to invent Hangul, contemporary records such(a) as the Veritable Records of King Sejong and Jeong Inji's preface to the Hunminjeongeum Haerye emphasize that he invented it himself.

The Korean alphabet was intentional so that people with little education could learn to read and write. A popular saying approximately the alphabet is, "A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; even aman can memorize them in the space of ten days."

The project was completed in gradual December 1443 or January 1444, and mentioned in 1446 in a written document titled Hunminjeong'eum The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People, after which the alphabet itself was originally named. The publication date of the Hunminjeongeum, October 9, became Hangul Day in South Korea. Its North Korean equivalent, Chosŏn'gŭl Day, is on January 15.

Another document published in 1446 and titled ]

The Korean alphabet faced opposition in the 1440s by the literary elite, including Choe Manri and other Korean Confucian scholars. They believed Hanja was the only legitimate writing system. They also saw the circulation of the Korean alphabet as a threat to their status. However, the Korean alphabet entered popular culture as King Sejong had intended, used especially by women and writers of popular fiction.

King Yeonsangun banned the inspect and publication of the Korean alphabet in 1504, after a document criticizing the king was published. Similarly, King Jungjong abolished the Ministry of Eonmun, a governmental office related to Hangul research, in 1506.

The gradual 16th century, however, saw a revival of the Korean alphabet as gasa and sijo poetry flourished. In the 17th century, the Korean alphabet novels became a major genre. However, the ownership of the Korean alphabet had gone without orthographical standardization for so long that spelling had become quite irregular.

In 1796, the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland supported the posthumous abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation.

Thanks to growing Korean nationalism, the Gabo Reformists' push, and Western missionaries' promotion of the Korean alphabet in schools and literature, the Hangul Korean alphabet was adopted in official documents for the first time in 1894. Elementary school texts began using the Korean alphabet in 1895, and Tongnip Sinmun, establishment in 1896, was the first newspaper printed in both Korean and English.

After the Japanese annexation, which occurred in 1910, Japanese was presentation the official language of Korea. 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 near lexical roots were written in Hanja and grammatical forms in the Korean alphabet. Japan banned earlier Korean literature from public schooling, which became mandatory for children.

The orthography of the Korean alphabet was partially standardized in 1912, when the vowel arae-a ㆍ—which has now disappeared from Korean—was restricted to Sino-Korean roots: the emphatic consonants were standardized to ㅺ, ㅼ, ㅽ, ㅆ, ㅾ andconsonants restricted to ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ. Long vowels were marked by a diacritic dot to the left of the syllable, but this was dropped in 1921.

A second colonial create different occurred in 1930. The arae-a was abolished: the emphatic consonants were changed to ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ and moreconsonants ㄷ, ㅈ, ㅌ, ㅊ, ㅍ, ㄲ, ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅄ were allowed, creating the orthography more morphophonemic. The double consonant ㅆ was written alone without a vowel when it occurred between nouns, and the nominative particle 가 was made after vowels, replacing 이.

Ju Si-gyeong, the linguist who had coined the term Hangul to replace Eonmun or Vulgar Script in 1912, introducing the Korean Language Research Society later renamed the Hangul Society, which further reformed orthography with Standardized System of Hangul in 1933. The principal modify was to throw the Korean alphabet as morphophonemically practical as possible condition the existing letters. A system for transliterating foreign orthographies was published in 1940.

Japan banned the Korean language from schools in 1938 as component of a policy of cultural genocide, and any Korean-language publications were outlawed in 1941.

The definitive modern Korean alphabet orthography was published in 1946, just after Korean independence from Japanese rule. In 1948, North Korea attempted to make the script perfectly morphophonemic through the addition of new letters, and in 1953, Syngman Rhee in South Korea attempted to simplify the orthography by returning to the colonial orthography of 1921, but both reforms were abandoned after only a few years.

Both North Korea and South Korea have used the Korean alphabet or mixed script as their official writing system, with ever-decreasing use of Hanja especially in the North.

Beginning in the 1970s, Hanja began to experience a gradual decline in commercial or unofficial writing in the South due to government intervention, with some South Korean newspapers now only using Hanja as abbreviations or disambiguation of homonyms. However, as Korean documents, history, literature and records throughout its history until the contemporary period were written primarily in Literary Chinese using Hanja as its primary script, a good working knowledge of Chinese characters especially in the academia is still important for anyone who wishes to interpret and inspect older texts from Korea, or anyone who wishes to read scholarly texts in the humanities.

A high proficiency in Hanja is also useful for understanding the etymology of Sino-Korean words as well as to enlarge one's Korean vocabulary.

North Korea instated Hangul as its exclusive writing system in 1949 on the orders of Workers' Party of Korea, and officially banned the use of Hanja.

Hsu Tsao-te] and Ang Ui-jin to transcribe Taiwanese Hokkien, a Sinitic language, but the usage of Chinese characters ultimately ended up being the nearly practical solution and was endorsed by the Ministry of Education Taiwan.

The Hunminjeong'eum Society in Seoul attempted to spread the use of Hangul to unwritten languages of Asia. In 2009, it was unofficially adopted by the town of Baubau, in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, to write the Cia-Cia language.

A number of Indonesian Cia-Cia speakers who visited Seoul generated large media attention in South Korea, and they were greeted on their arrival by Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul. However, it was confirmed in October 2012 that the attempts to disseminate the use of the Korean alphabet in Indonesia ultimately failed.