💎 What you'll learn in this post
📌 Heads up before you read
🔥 Boosting Korean Knowledge
🥇 Hangeul won first place at The World Alphabet Olympics?
Hangeul is a very scientific and systematic script.
It was awarded 🥇 first place at The 1st World Alphabet Olympics and again at the second competition, with the Telugu script from India in second place and the English alphabet in third.
While the 26 letters of the English alphabet can produce only about 300 sounds, the 24 characters of Hangeul can theoretically produce over 11,000 sounds and practically about 8,700. This makes Hangeul highly efficient in transmitting information.
So why has Hangeul achieved such impressive results? Let's explore the principles behind its creation.
1️⃣ To fully Understand Hangeul, One Should Start With Hunminjeongeum
#Hangeul, the script in use today, was originally called Hunminjeongeum. Thus, Hunminjeongeum serves as the foundational prototype of Hangeul.
2️⃣ Two Main Principles Behind King Sejong's Creation of Hunminjeongeum
The principle behind King Sejong's creation of Hunminjeongeum can be explained in two ways:
📌 First, the remaining letters were derived from the basic letters to improve organization!
➡ Consonant
ⓐ ㄱ → ㅋ
ⓑ ㄴ → ㄷ → ㅌ
ⓒ ㅁ → ㅂ → ㅍ
ⓓ ㅅ → ㅈ → ㅊ
ⓔ ㅇ → ㅎ
➡ Vowel
ⓐ ㅏ → ㅑ
ⓑ ㅓ → ㅕ
ⓒ ㅗ → ㅛ
ⓓ ㅜ → ㅠ
📌 Second, the shapes of the letters were designed to imitate the organs of speech, the sky, the land, and the people!
The vowel letters are symbolic representations of various elements:
①ㆍis a letter inspired by the brightness (Yang) of the sky.
② ㅡ is a letter inspired by the darkness (Yin) of the land.
③ ㅣ is a letter inspired by the people, representing the balance between light and dark, embodied by the vertical line.
In this way, the fundamental elements of all things are embodied in vowels.
🔥 Boosting Korean Knowledge
Since it's KONOGRAM, we'll tell you one more amazing thing :) It's really cool, so take a good look!
When one side of the earth faces the sun, it experiences a bright day, while the other side experiences a dark night. This very principle is also reflected in the vowels of Hangeul.
Based on the circle (↑),
The sounds at the top and right of the circle are called positive (bright) vowels
The pronunciation of these vowels is bright, cheerful, and fresh.
They give a sense of brightness, lightness, clarity, speed, and smallness.
The positive (bright) vowels
include ㅏ, ㅑ, ㅗ, ㅛ, and also ㅐ, ㅒ, ㅘ, ㅚ, ㅙ
The sounds below and to the left of the circle are called negative (dark) vowels
The pronunciation of these vowels is dark, dull, and heavy.
They give a sense of darkness, heaviness, dullness, slowness, and bigness.
The negative (dark) vowels
include ㅓ, ㅕ, ㅜ, ㅠ, and also ㅔ, ㅖ, ㅝ, ㅟ, ㅞ, ㅡ, ㅢ
While Hangeul 'ㅣ' works well with any vowel and is categorized as a neutral vowel.
That's why the Korean equivalent of "Love you", 사랑해[sa-rang-hae], uses the positive vowels ㅏ, ㅏ, and ㅐ. This makes the pronunciation bright, cheerful, and lovely! 😍
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