The Structure of Hangul — Consonants, Vowels, and Syllables

What You Will Learn in This Unit

In this unit, you learn that Hangul is a script that gathers consonant letters and vowel letters together and writes one syllable in one square. Within one square, you check where the initial, medial, and final positions are placed, and you learn why the position of a consonant letter changes according to the shape of the vowel letter. You also check the direction in which letters are read in horizontal writing.

The Three Positions of a Syllable

Hangul is a script that writes a syllable, a unit of sound, in one square. A square contains a consonant and a vowel together, and the space is divided into three positions: the initial, the medial, and the final. The consonant at the very front is called the initial (choseong), and the vowel right after the initial is called the medial (jungseong). The consonant at the bottom of the square is called the final (jongseong), and a consonant in the final position is also called batchim.

Every syllable must have an initial and a medial. The final may or may not be present. Therefore, a syllable consists of an initial and a medial, or of an initial, a medial, and a final. The word 사람 (person) consists of two syllables, 사 and 람, and the letters in each position are shown in the table below.

As the table shows, 사 has no final, and 람 has the final ㅁ.

Vertical and Horizontal Vowels

Vowel letters are divided into vertical and horizontal types according to their shape. ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅣ are long vertically, so they are vertical vowels, and ㅗ, ㅜ, ㅡ are long horizontally, so they are horizontal vowels. Once the shape of a vowel letter is determined, the position of the initial written with it is also determined.

A vertical vowel is written to the right of the initial. A horizontal vowel is written below the initial. A table summarizing representative letters of the two groups of vowels is as follows.

All six syllables in the table use the same initial ㄱ, and only the position where the vowel is placed changes according to the shape of the vowel letter. The final is always written at the bottom of the square, whether the vowel is vertical or horizontal. For example, 람 is the syllable in which the final ㅁ is written below the vertical vowel ㅏ.