Forms
The 'Phags-pa script, with consonants arranged according to Chinese phonology. At the far left are vowels and medial consonants.Top: Approximate values in Middle Chinese. (Values in parentheses were not used for Chinese.)
Second: Standard letter forms.
Third: Seal script forms. (A few letters, marked by hyphens, are not distinct from the preceding letter.)
Bottom: The "Tibetan" forms. (Several letters have alternate forms, separated here by a • bullet.)
Unlike the ancestral Tibetan script, all 'Phags-pa letters are written in temporal order (that is, /CV/ is written in the order C–V for all vowels) and in-line (that is, the vowels are not diacritics). However, vowel letters retain distinct initial forms, and short /a/ is not written except initially, making 'Phags-pa transitional between an abugida and a full alphabet. The letters of a 'Phags-pa syllable are linked together so that they form syllabic blocks.
'Phags-pa was written in a variety of graphic forms. The standard form (top, at right) was blocky, but a "Tibetan" form (bottom) was even more so, consisting almost entirely of straight orthogonal lines and right angles. A "seal script" form (Chinese 蒙古篆字 měnggǔ zhuānzì "Mongolian Seal Script"), used for imperial seals and the like, was more elaborate, with squared sinusoidal lines and spirals.
Korean records that state that hangul was based on an "Old Seal Script", 古篆字, which Gary Ledyard believes to be 'Phags-pa and a reference to its Chinese name 蒙古篆字 měnggǔ zhuānzì. (See origin of hangul.) However, it is the simpler standard form of 'Phags-pa that is the closer graphic match to hangul.
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