Gari Ledyard - Research On The Origin of Hangul

Research On The Origin of Hangul

Ledyard believes that the basic hangul consonants were adopted from the Mongolian Phagspa script of the Yuan dynasty, known as the 蒙古篆字 měnggǔ zhuānzì (Mongol seal script).

Only five letters were adopted from Phagspa, with most of the rest of the consonants created by featural derivation from these, as described in the account in the Hunmin Jeong-eum Haerye. However, which letters the basic consonants were differs between the two accounts. Whereas the Haerye implies that the graphically simplest letters ㄱㄴㅁㅅㅇ are basic, with others derived from them by the addition of strokes (though with ㆁㄹㅿ set apart), Ledyard believes the five phonologically simplest letters ㄱㄷㄹㅂㅈ, which were basic in Chinese phonology, were also basic to hangul, with strokes either added or subtracted to derive the other letters. It was these five core letters which were taken from the Phagspa script, and ultimately derive from the Tibetan letters ག ད ལ བ ས. Thus they may be cognate with Greek Γ Δ Λ Β and the letters C/G D L B of the Latin alphabet. (The history of the S sounds between Tibetan and Greek is more difficult to reconstruct.) A sixth basic letter, ㅇ, was an invention, as in the Haerye account.

The creation of the vowel letters is essentially the same in the two accounts.