Hangul 1 : 10 Basic Vowels (모음)

     My lecturer said that "If you want to learn Korean Language, you must learn the Korean alphabets first. Because Hangul's sound cannot be romanized.". Now lets learn the 10 basic vowels of Korean Alphabets, Hangul.

     In the creation of the description of the vowel, King Sejong had applied East Asian philosophy of divination, a belief which existence are all in Yin and Yang system. And sound is no exception. There is brightness and darkness in sound. In order to represent this principle into vowel description, three basic shape were created in the image of the sky ( . ), land ( - ) and man ( | ) and it expresses many aspects of the sounds in unique way. As time passed, the dot changed iinto dash shape because the dot hardly recognized in the character. There are 10 basic vowels and 11 complex vowels that Korean used now. The followings are the basic vowels taht is in alphabetical order.

When writing the basic vowels, we need to write it with a consonant called yieung ( ㅇ ). The vowels will look like these.

Unit 1 : Hangul

     Koreans use their own unique alphabet called Hangul (originally called Hun Min Jeong Um), and it was created under King Sejong and completed in 1443 during the Chosun Dynasty. Before that, Korean had been using Chineese characters to describe the Korean language. Then King Sejong realized that the system is not suitable for Korean language because Chineese has too many character to choose for the sound of Korean. Furthermore, only upper social classes' children could be sent to learnt Chineese character, which is unfair to the majority people who are remain illiteracy. He wanted to create a veru easy and understandable new characters so that everybody can express their thoughts in written form without any difficulties. With these grounds, he has created own unique Korean alphabets, Hangul which consists of 40 letters, 21 to represent vowels and diphthongs and 19 to represent the consonant.

The picture of King Sejong

King Sejong Statue at Gwanghwamun Square, Seoul, Korea.

Introduction To Hangul

     K-Pop are getting famous in the world right now isn't it? Well, currently I'm studying Korean Language a.k.a Hangul. I intend to share it in my blog so that people who are interested in Korean Language can learn it here. I'll try to let you learn just like what I learnt in my class. I learnt Korean Language from a Korean Lecturer called Tiara. First of all, I want you to know what is Hangul and its history.

Hangul (Korean: 한글 ; transcribed as Han-geul in South Korea), also known as Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글) in North Korea, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It was created during the Joseon Dynasty in 1443, and is still the official alphabet of Korea.

Hangul is a true alphabet of 24 consonant and vowel letters. However, instead of being written sequentially like the letters of the Latin alphabet, Hangul letters are grouped into blocks, such as 한 han, each of which transcribes a syllable. That is, although the syllable 한 han may look like a single character, it is composed of three letters: ㅎ h, ㅏ a, and ㄴ n. Each syllabic block consists of two to five letters, including at least one consonant and one vowel. These blocks are then arranged horizontally from left to right or vertically from top to bottom. The number of possible blocks is 11,172, though there are far fewer possible syllables in Korean, and not all possible syllables actually occur. For a phonological description, see Korean phonology.

Taken from Hangul-Wikipedia

To read more about Hangul and its history, please kindly click here.