The four lost letters of Hangul

An alphabet with a birthday

Most writing systems grew slowly over centuries. Hangul was designed on purpose. King Sejong and his scholars created it in 1443 and published it in 1446 in a book called Hunminjeongeum, "the correct sounds for instructing the people". Before that, Korean was written with Chinese characters, which took years to learn and did not fit the Korean language well.

South Korea celebrates that publication every year on October 9, Hangul Day (한글날).

The original alphabet had 17 consonants and 11 vowels. Today's has 14 consonants and 10 vowels. The four missing letters were not mistakes. The sounds they stood for faded from spoken Korean, and once a sound is gone, its letter has nothing left to do.

ㆍ arae-a, the dot

The vowels of Hangul were built from three ideas: a dot for heaven (ㆍ), a flat line for earth (ㅡ) and a standing line for people (ㅣ). Every other vowel is a combination of these. The short strokes in ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅗ and ㅜ were originally dots.

On its own, the dot was a vowel called arae-a, "the lower a". Its sound drifted towards ㅏ and ㅡ over several centuries, but the letter stayed in spelling far longer than its sound and was only officially dropped in 1933. You can still hear something like it in the Jeju language.

ㅿ bansiot, the soft z

Bansiot looks like a little triangle. It stood for a buzzing sound close to the English "z", softer than ㅅ. That sound disappeared from Korean during the 16th century, and the letter went with it.

ㆁ yet-ieung, the old "ng"

Today a single circle, ㅇ, does two jobs: it is silent at the start of a syllable and says "ng" at the end. Originally those were two letters. Yet-ieung, a circle with a small stroke on top, was the "ng". As the "ng" sound stopped appearing at the start of syllables, the two circles merged, and by the 17th century plain ㅇ had taken over both roles.

ㆆ yeorin-hieut, the catch in the throat

Yeorin-hieut, "soft ㅎ", stood for a glottal stop, the little catch in the throat in the middle of "uh-oh". It was used mainly to write the Korean readings of Chinese characters, and it fell out of use the fastest of all four, within the first few decades of the alphabet's life.

Why we drew faces with them

We liked the idea of giving forgotten letters a new job. Look at our mascots again: the eyes are ㆆ, a brow over a circle; the nose is ㅿ; the mouth is ㆁ, a circle with its little stroke; and the cheeks are ㆍ, the heavenly dot.

Letters disappear when nobody writes them. Every time someone writes Korean for the first time, in their own hand, the alphabet stays alive in a new way. That is what this site is for.