Hangul orthography

The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul internationally, Hangeul in South Korea, and Choson'gŭl in North Korea, has had multiple different orthographies. North Korea's current official orthography is the Compendium of Korean Language Norms. South Korea's current orthography is called "Hangeul Orthography" (한글 맞춤법). Hangul is also used to transcribe other languages, especially Jeju and Cia-Cia. Orthographies for those languages are fairly similar to those for Korean, although they use one or more additional letters.

Depth The depth of current Hangul orthographies is a subject of some disagreement. Many scholars argue current orthographies have a relatively shallow or transparent orthography, in that pronunciation generally closely corresponds to what is written. Their complexities are often the product of sound changes in the Korean language over time as well as morphophonemic orthographic practices (changing some spellings to reflect the function or meaning of some words). Some have described current orthographies as deep because of the morphophonemic practices.

Spelling In general, words are spelled as they sound in the respective standard Korean dialect, with most exceptions being due to morphophonemic word-formation rules. For example, 하늘 (haneul; 'sky') is spelled the way it is pronounced. However, 먹어 (meogeo; 'to eat') has this spelling despite being pronounced 머거. This is because it follows a word-formation rule that preserves the spellings of the stem verb 먹 and the particle 어. Other exceptions also exist, for example relating to pronunciation differences between stem words when pronounced alone and when attached to particles that begin with ㅇ.

North–South differences

Various shared words are spelled differently between North and South Korea. One significant reason for this is the differing standard dialects used. North Korea uses the Pyongan dialect and South Korea the Gyeonggi dialect. Differences arise due to various phonemena, including the initial sound rule, vowel harmony, local pronunciations, loanwords, tensing, compounds, morphological derivation, and the saisiot (epenthic ㅅ).

Punctuation

Current punctuation Hangul has used varying punctuation over time and now in both North and South Korea. Modern Hangul now uses a mix of modern Western, Korean, and East Asian punctuation.

South Korean punctuation South Korean punctuation largely follows Western practice, with some exceptions. Examples of exceptions include 『 』 or ≪ ≫; either of these sets of characters can be put around titles of works. Also, the tilde (~) can be used to indicate ranges of numbers or dates, as well as distances. Spaces are used in Hangul. As with most other scripts, practices around spaces are somewhat arbitrary and ambiguous because it is difficult to define what a word is. Spacing is considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of Hangul orthography; many native Korean speakers do not use spaces properly or sometimes even at all. In general, spaces are inserted between lexical clusters called eojeol (어절; 語節). These lexical clusters can be subdivided into various other categories. Each eojeol can consist of a word and its subsequent corresponding particles or compounds. For example, "학교에 간다" consists of two eojeol separated by a space. The first is "학교" (lit. 'school') with an attached adpositional particle "에". The second is "간다", a conjugated verb.

North Korean punctuation North Korean punctuation is similar to Western practice. Differences include the lack of Western quotation marks (e.g. "), which are replaced by guillemet (≪ ≫). Like South Korea, it recommends the tilde (~) for ranges of numbers or dates. Recommendations are also given for vertical writing. Vertical writing punctuation is largely the same as horizontal, but guidance is given on the placement and rotation of some punctuation marks. North Korean spacing rules result in fewer spaces and more compound words when compared to South Korea's.

Historical punctuation

The original punctuation system was called kuduchŏm (구두점; 句讀點). In the 15th century, a small circle was used to mark major phrasal and sentential/clausal endings. If the circle was placed in the center after a syllable, it marked the end of a major break within a sentence. If it was placed in the right corner of the cell of the final syllable, it possibly indicated either the end of a sentence or a rising tone indicating a pause for that final character. Some texts, when using Hangul to transcribe foreign languages like Japanese or Manchu, used a variety of relatively unique punctuation for various purposes.

Tone markings Tone markings, called pangchŏm (방점; 傍點; lit. 'side dots'), were originally used in Hangul to indicate tones. They were marked by dots to the left of a Hangul character:

Level tone (평성; 平聲) had no dots Departing tone (거성; 去聲) had a single dot ( 〮) Rising tone (상성; 上聲) had two dots ( 〯) Entering tone (입성; 入聲) does not receive its own dot indication. Hangul's creators argue it is implicit in certain words, but Ledyard reads this as implying Korean doesn't have a specific entering tone. The writers of the Haerye designed this system because they thought that Middle Korean had tones, similar to those of Chinese. However, a number of modern scholars disagree with this. Several argue that Middle Korean was a pitch-accent language that had pitches, possibly two: high and low. Tone markings were widespread until their decline in the 16th century.

Syllable blocks Hangul letters are arranged into syllable blocks in a principle called moassŭgi (모아쓰기; lit. 'gathering together and writing'). Each syllable block is broadly divided into two or three components: an initial consonant (초성; 初聲; choseong), vowel (중성; 中聲; jungseong; also called "medial"), and optional final consonant (종성; 終聲; jongseong; also called 받침; batchim). Final heterogenous digraph consonant clusters are orthographically considered to be two different letters combined, but phonologically considered to be a single letter. When no initial consonant sound is needed, the zero initial consonant ㅇ is used. To construct a syllable block, the following rules are applied in order:

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