Lesson number 1 of my Korean Grammar Guide: Covering the writing system and the basical aspects and advantages of Hangeul.

1. 1. The Korean alphabet
Hangŭl (한글) was created in the fifteenth century by King Sejong, the king of Joseon (An ancient korean
Kingdom that included South Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula) to face the high amount of illiteracy.
The Korean language couldn’t be written, and the only way to record written messages was translating the
whole text into Chinese and using Chinese characters.
Hangŭl is inspired by the philosophical concept of Yin and Yang and was created by scientists who had
knowledge of anatomy (It is featural). It is considered one of the most scientific alphabets in the world.
1.1 Consonants
Alveolar
Velars
Labials
Glottal
Stop
ㄷ /t/, ㄸ /t:/
ㄱ /k/, ㄲ /k:/
ㅂ /p/, ㅃ /p:/
Aspirated stop
ㅌ /tʰ/
ㅋ /kʰ/
ㅍ /pʰ/
Fricatives/Affricates ㅅ /s/, ㅆ/s:/
ㅎ /h/
ㅈ /tɕ/, ㅉ /t:ɕ/
ㅊ /tɕʰ/
Nasals
ㄴ /n/
Laterals
ㅇ/ /*
ㅁ /m/
ㄹ / ɾ,l/
*The consonant ㅇ is a velar nasal at the end of the syllable, but it is used as a dummy consonant to represent syllables that begin
with a vowel. It is sometimes referred as “the silent consonant”.
1.2 Vowels and vowel harmony
Light
Dark
Neuter
아 a, /a/
어 ŏ, /ʌ/
이 i, /i/
+i
애 ae, /ɛ/
에 e, /e/
i+
야 ya, /ja/
여 yŏ, /jʌ/
오 o, /o/
우 u, /u/
으 ŭ /ɯ/
+i
외 oe, /we/
위 wi, /wi/
의 e, /e/; ee, /i:/
i+
요 yo, /yo/
유 yu, /ju/
w+
와 wa, /a/
워 wo, /wa/
w+i
왜 wae, /wɛ/
웨 we, /we/ (Not used)
Open
Close
Some vowels are not pronounced like we could expect. Most of the times there are historical reasons, such
for the “+i” diphthongs that used to be pronounced with a final semi vocalic ‘i’ (애 = aj > 애 = ɛ) but now
they changed because of phonetic mutations and they have another pronunciation. However, there are
exceptions too, like 의 that gets pronounced as /e/ when used as a particle, but /i:/ otherwise.
It’s very important to remember whether the vowel is light, dark or neuter, because it will be important
when we will be going over morphology. Some endings and suffixes, indeed, have a different form

2. according to the lightness or darkness of the last vowel of the root. Neuter vowels are used as dark most of
the times, with a few exceptions.
1.3 Syllable building
Syllable grouping is one of the fundamental operations in Korean. Indeed, Korean is not written
sequentially one letter after another, it is grouped into “blocks” named “graphical
syllables”. (Note: graphical syllables do not always coincide with their phonetic syllable).
Each syllable has at least a consonant and a vowel. Vowels are distinguished in horizontal-shaped and
vertical-shaped and they are added under the consonant if they are horizontal and next
to the consonant if they are vertical. When the syllable begins with a vowel it can’t be
written alone: the silent consonant is used.
The diphthongs with the semivowel ‘W’ are built with a horizontal-shaped and a
vertical-shaped vowel, so we can have a syllable that has two vowels together. Light
vowels always form diphthongs with light semivowels, and dark vowels with dark
semivowels, so the sound /w/ is represented by ‘O’ before ‘A’ and before other light vowels
but by ‘U’ otherwise.
Syllables can have a final consonant or a group of two final consonants (Only the
groups ㄳ ks, ㄵ nj, ㄶ nh, ㄺ lg, ㄻ lm, ㄼ lb, ㄽ ls, ㄾ lt, ㄿ lp’, ㅀ lh, ㅄ bs are allowed).
1.4 Peculiarities
1.4.1 Hangeul as a featural alphabet
The Korean alphabet is unique. It is referred as a “featural alphabet” (And the term featural alphabet was
created to describe it!), which means that the shape of the letter is not just invented, but it is based on the
shape of the mouth during the utterance of the sound. We can easily see the similarities between the
letters that share the same place of articulation (Each
alveolar consonant have the same L-shaped stroke that
represent the tongue hitting the teeth) and the manner of
articulation (Each non nasal stop has a horizontal line that
represent the occlusion).
The shape of the letters is less complex than the western
alphabets, so that we can easily remember them.
Also, even if Korean has a lot of different sounds, the
number of the consonants is relatively small: fourteen.
1.4.2 Hangeul as a morphophonemic alphabet
Lots of times the alphabets tend to represent sounds one by one. Sounds undergo various phonetic
phenomena and sometimes the sound changes “hide” some grammatical features. Think about the English
word “Illegal”, which is formed by the prefix “in” plus the word “legal”. The ‘n’ was assimilated and we no
longer see it as a compound word. If we spelled it “inlegal” we would still have the same sound but we
would preserve the etymology of the word.

3. Hangeul, indeed, is described as “morphophonemic”, because it underlines the grammatical blocks.
In the example image we see how the verbal phrase “Can’t go” must be written separating the particle
“Can’t” and the stem of the verb to go. The grammatical blocks are underlined. If we transcribed it to the
Latin alphabet, the t would be assimilated and the
morpheme would no longer be underlines.
Lots of times Korean words have the same sound but are
distinguished by how the grammatical blocks are aligned. A
common example is:
낮가지
나까지
Nat + ka + ji (Spend the day), is the sum of nat (낮, day), ka (가, to go) e ji (지, verbal ending). Overall, since
the ‘t’ is assimilated, the word sounds like “nakkaji”, just like Na + kka.ji (Up to me), that on the other hand
is the sum of na (나, I) e kkaji (까지, up to). Despite sounding alike, we can easily understand that the first
one is a verb phrase and the other one is a pronoun with a postposition.
1.5 Phenomena and assimilations
Letters are not always pronounced the way I listed in the table of consonants. A lot of cluster that are
allowed in the English language are not allowed in Korean and they are assimilated, following these rules.

Between two voiced borders (vowels or voiced consonants), all the non aspirated stops get voiced.
아가 > Aga.

Each consonant at the end of the syllable is pronounced as a non aspirated stop. Each aspirated
consonant loses its aspiration and the affricates become stops (But the nasals and the laterals are
still nasals and laterals). 맞다 > Matta.

The ㄹ has a / ɾ / sound word-initially or between voiced borders. Before or after a ㄴ, the ㄴ gets
assimilated and the sound /l:/ is created. After a stop (except ㄴ), ㄹ is pronounced as /n/. 랄 > Ral;
안라 > Alla; 알나 > Alla; 악라 > Ang’na.

A stop gets nasal before another nasal. Non aspirated consonants get aspirated before or after an
ㅎ. 앞나 > Amna. 놓다 > Not’a.

Before /i/ consonants are palatalized. 시 > Shi; 기 > Gi /Gʲi/.