Korean Letter
|
Vowels Design |
Vowels
Design
The basic letters of the alphabet
when Hunmin-jeongeum was first created numbered eight; they were the vowels
"¤·, ¤Ñ, ¤Ó" and the
consonants "¤¡, ¤¤, ¤±, ¤µ, ¤·"
The vowels were created in the
image of the sky, land, and man. That is '¤·' resembles the
roundness of the heaven, '¤Ñ' represents the flat earth and '¤Ó' is the image of a
standing man.
The other vowels are variations of
these three basic vowels.
When first proclaimed by King
Sejong, Hunmin-jeongeum had 28 letters in all, of which only 24 are in use
today. The 24 letters are consonants 14 and vowels 10.
The reason consonants and vowels
were separated was due to their differing functions when two letters were
combined to form a syllable.