If this site is not displaying correctly, see the Browser Setup page for debugging information. If you have your browser configured correctly, the Web site below should display the correct characters. When Korean is transliterated to the Western alphabet, it is called Romaja and is similar to Japanese Romāji. In addition, slightly under 2,000 Chinese characters are still used to some extent, so encoding systems must include these as well.
Like other syllabaries, Hangul has a relatively large inventory of individual characters corresponding to possible consonant plus vowel combinations. Similarly 글 is a combination of ㄱ 'g' + ᅳ 'u' + ㄹ 'l' from top to bottom. See the links below for more information on Hangul.įor instance 한 'han' is a combination of ㅎ 'h' on the top, ㅏ 'a' on the side and ㄴ 'l' on the bottom. Korean is primarily written in a phonetic based syllabic alphabet called Hangul ( 한글) which was invented in the 1440s to replace older writing systems based on the Chinese script.Įach symbol in Hangul is a actually a composite which includes a consonant and following vowel and additional sounds.
