🤔 I Bet You Didn’t Know This About Korean Alphabet Pt. 2
How did King Sejong create Korean vowels?
Hi there! I hope you are having a great weekend! I’ll be going to Vancouver this coming Tuesday for a week so that’ll be a good break for me although I plan to continue working. I’ll share with you if I do anything interesting!😉
Today, I would like to talk a little more about Hangul continuing from the last email you received this past Thursday. And today’s topic is going to be Korean vowels of Hangul. As you might already know, there are 10 vowel letters in total (except the compound vowels😬) as shown below.
From the last email, we know that Korean consonants were modeled after the shape of the vocal organs when producing certain sounds. Well, in order to develop vowel letters, King Sejong took a very different approach and this is going to be today’s topic!🌟
Korean vowels
Oriental philosophy
Above, you see the ten basic vowels of Hangul and I always tell my students that Korean vowels are just a bunch of sticks with a little stroke or two in the middle.😂 Well, given the fact that King Sejong didn’t just scribble and draw random shapes to create the consonants, these sticks and little strokes should mean something, right?
In fact, I’ve done some research and discovered that oriental philosophy believed that all creation consists of three things:
Heaven😇
Earth🌎
Human🧍
Well, that’s the English translation… but if you look at the Chinese way of writing the three components, 天地人, each character represents sky, land and a person respectively. And as you can see in the vowel chart above, Korean vowels are also made up of three things:
ㆍ
ㅡ
ㅣ
You might want to ask me, “I don’t see the dot in any of the vowels!”🤔 As a matter of fact, the dot represents the little stroke you see in the middle of a vowel except for the last two in the chart. So, according to Confucianism, there are three things that make up all creatures in the universe and there are also three components that make up Korean vowels to our surprise. Does it ring any bells?🔔
Yes! King Sejong applied the oriental philosophy into developing the letters of Hangul:
As you can see, the dot represents sky, the horizontal vowel represents land and the vertical vowel represents a person. This principle used to develop Korean vowels came from the oriental philosophy saying that the sky is round, the land is flat and human beings stand in between.
If you take a closer look at it, you can also find a correlation between the vowels and the mouth shapes for each of them.
In order to make the sounds of the vowels that have (ㆍ) in them, you have to make your mouth a round shape (Try and say 아, 어, 오, 우 yourself!).
For the vowel ㅡ, your mouth needs to be stretched out sideways which resembles the letter. In addition to that, your tongue will also be flat in your mouth!
However, if you try and say the vowel ㅣ, your mouth stays wide horizontally which doesn’t seem to make sense, but if you pay attention to your tongue, you can tell it comes towards your teeth as well as getting a little erected becoming more like the vowel ㅣ.
Positive vowels vs. Negative vowels
In my Korean 101 course, I talk about the placement of the vowels in a syllable block apart from the pronunciation of the letters that vertical vowels go to the right of the initial consonant and horizontal vowels are placed underneath it. But, let me tell you another interesting fact about them!
Korean vowels can be divided into two different groups:
Positive vowels
Negative vowels
They can also be called “bright and dark” or “light and heavy” respectively. So, what determines a vowel to have either positive or negative value? Well, the vowels that point up or to the right are seen as positive and the ones that point down or to the left are seen as negative as shown below.
Therefore, the two basic vowels from each group actually make up a great pair and are used together in many words. This is called “vowel harmony” which is often find in onomatopoeia!
Well, let’s take a look at two words that literally mean “bright” and “dark” respectively.
On the left side, the word “밝다” is a descriptive verb which means “to be bright” and as you can see, the stem of the verb, 밝, is written with the vowel ㅏwhich is a positive vowel. On the other side, the word “어둡다” is a descriptive verb which means “to be dark” and the stem, 어둡, only has negative vowels pointing left and down. Isn’t this cool?😲
Let me give you a couple of examples with different color words.
“노랗다” is a descriptive verb which means “to be yellow” and the stem, 노랗, has positive vowels, ㅗ and ㅏ, in it. And if you change the vowels with their negative counterparts, ㅜ and ㅓ, the color that the word describes instantly becomes a lot darker than a plain yellow color.
And you can see the same pattern with another color, blue in this example, with the descriptive verb “파랗다” which means “to be blue”.
Let me show you an onomatopoeia example.
I’m sure you can already see the pattern yourself now! These two words are onomatopoeia describing a state of light. “반짝반짝” , made up of positive vowels, conveys glittering and twinkling light whereas the other word “번쩍번쩍”, made up of negative vowels, gives rather flashing and lightning sensation which feels a lot bigger and heavier in terms of the intensity. Cool, eh?
This is not a must-know piece of information when learning Korean, but understanding how this phonological feature works will definitely make learning Korean not only easier but also fun for you. And you will be able to understand why such similar sounding words that have a subtle difference in writing could deliver significantly different connotations!
And… that’s pretty much all I wanted to talk about Hangul with you!
To sum it up, I would say that Hangul is a combination of scientific consonants and philosophical vowels!
Do you see Korean alphabet differently now than how you did before reading my emails? Well, many linguists in the world had already recognized the excellence of Hangul a long time ago and UNESCO gives a prize every year to institutions, organizations or individuals who make contributions to the fight against illiteracy under the name of “UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize”.🏆
Okay… I think we are ready to really get started with our Korean journey! If you enjoyed reading, please share your thoughts!
See you soon!👋
다음에 또 봐!💙
Your content is so interesting! Thanks for all your hard work. I’m always curious as to what you will write about next.
Have a great time in Vancouver! If you have time go to Sura Korean restaurant on Robson st. It doesn’t have the bbq but still pretty good. Also has a good vibe. If Koreans go there it must be good -that’s my philosophy. Although you probably have great Korean food at home. And just a few steps further down you have Nukid café with the best doughnuts. The strawberry one and one with sprinkled sugar were my favorites.
Yes you guessed it I’m all about food:). I’m French 🤷♀️
Btw I have been by your area where Coombs “goats on the roof” is. I always make sure to go there if we go to Tofino when I visit my sis. Going to Vancouver in May as a matter of fact. Let me know if you know of any great Korean places. There are not many surprisingly.
Have a great time in Van!
Fabienne
선생님, I knew the concept of the birth of the vowels that represent heaven, earth and human, but not that of the philosophical aspect.
Very interesting the idea of 한국 born from the combination of scientific consonants and philosophical vowels and that of Vowels Harmony where positive vowels are blended with negative ones, bright vowels with dark vowels like yin and yang. This explains why I, whose name is made up of positive or bright vowels, chose a teacher whose name has negative or dark vowels. We are part of one whole😇! Eureka💡! Just kidding though now, when I write or read, I can't but think about what I learned today.
As for your trip, have fun, relax, rest and don't think about us who have to work and carry the weight of the world on our shoulders... 😉
다음에 또 봐!🙋🏼♀️💚