Names of Korean letters

When I was blogging here seven years ago, I was immersed in language classes and interacting with native and non-native Korean speakers on a daily basis. I was thinking a lot about Korean language and writing, and blogging extensively about both.

This is the introduction to Korean writing that I wrote back in 2007.

I haven't been doing that so much this time around. (I'm planning to blog in the future about how weird and constrained my life is here.) But it occurred to me that a post about the origin and structure of the Korean alphabet letter names might be of interest. Some of you have seen the video posted on FB showing Tek contorting his body into the shapes of various letters. You can hear him and me saying the names of the letters. Unlike the English names of the letters of the Roman alphabet, the Korean letter names are highly systematic (if not entirely consistent, as will be explained later).

These are the consonant letters, their transcriptions, and their letter names. It is helpful to remember that eu represents a single sound close to that in the English words book and put (for the linguists: [ɨ]) and eo represents a single sound close to that in the English words butt and some (for the linguists: [ʌ]).

ㄱ g: gi-eok
ㄴ n: ni-eun
ㄷ d: di-geut
ㄹ r: ri-eul
ㅁ m: mi-eum
ㅂ b: bi-eup
ㅅ s: si-ot
ㅇ zero/ng: i-eung
ㅈ j: ji-eut
ㅊ ch: chi-eut
ㅋ k: ki-euk
ㅌ t: ti-eut
ㅍ p: pi-eup
ㅎ h: hi-eut

(The vowel sounds are simpler; their names are just their sounds. For example, the name of the letter ㅏ a is "a".)

The names are each two syllables, and they indicate precisely how that letter is pronounced when it occurs at the beginning of a word and when it occurs at the end of a word. The difference in pronunciation can be considerable.

So: The name mi-eum shows that the letter ㅁ is pronounced with an "m" sound at both the beginning and end of a word. The name si-ot shows that the letter ㅅ is pronounced with an "s" sound at the beginning of a word but a "t" sound at the end of a word.

We actually know the origin of this system of naming letters. It is later than the invention of the alphabet itself. The alphabet was invented in 1443 and promulgated in 1446. The document explaining the use of the alphabet does not specify names of the letters. Some scholars believe they were simply pronounced with an i ("ee") vowel:

ㄱ g: gi
ㄴ n: ni
ㄷ d: di

etc. But we don't really know.

In 1527 a brilliant linguist named Choe Sejin 최세진 published a Chinese-character primer for children called Hunmongjahoe 훈몽자회 訓蒙字會. The pronunciations of the Chinese characters were given in the Korean alphabet. Choe lived at a time when most literate people were more comfortable and familiar with Chinese characters than with the still-new Korean alphabet. Because of this lack of familiarity, in his introduction Choe laid out the letters and examples of their pronunciation, much as a modern American dictionary explains its pronunciation guide in the front matter.

Here's what the relevant page of the introduction looks like:

The text is read from right to left, top to bottom. Click through for a larger image.

You should be able to identify the first eight letters listed (in the second column from the right) as identical to the first eight that I listed above. (As it happens, modern Korean alphabetical order also originates with this work.) These are the eight letters that could normally occur both at the beginning and the end of a word in Choe's time.

To illustrate the proper pronunciation of the letters, Choe provided two Chinese characters for each: one illustrating its pronunciation in word-initial position, and one indicating its pronunciation in word-final pronunciation. (The characters under each letter are half-width.) For example, the letter ㅁ is illustrated with the characters 眉 (pronounced mi meaning 'eyebrow') and 音 (pronounced eum meaning sound).

To the extent possible, he chose initial characters with an i vowel and final characters with an eu vowel. He was able to do so for the letters ni-eun, ri-eul, mi-eum, bi-eup, and i-eung. But there were no Chinese characters available that had the right pronunciations for the other letters, so he picked the closest available, yielding gi-eok, di-geut, and si-ot.

This basic system was later extended (I don't know when or by whom) to the other consonant letters in regular fashion, which is why the last six letters in my list above all have completely regular i-eu names. (Interesting aside: in North Korea they regularized the names of all the letters, so instead of gi-eok, di-geut, and si-ot, North Koreans call them gi-euk, di-eut, and si-eut.)

Now if you go back to that FB video, you should be able to hear and understand the letter names.