Yanwen - Orthography

Orthography

Until the 20th century, no official orthography of Hangul had been established. Due to liaison, heavy consonant assimilation, dialectical variants and other reasons, a Korean word can potentially be spelled in various ways. King Sejong seemed to prefer morphophonemic spelling (representing the underlying root forms) rather than a phonemic one (representing the actual sounds). However, early in its history, Hangul was dominated by phonemic spelling. Over the centuries the orthography became partially morphophonemic, first in nouns, and later in verbs. Today it is as morphophonemic as is practical. The difference between phonetic Romanization, phonemic orthography, and morpho-phonemic orthography can be illustrated with the phrase motaneun sarami:

• Phonetic transcription and translation:

motaneun sarami

a person who cannot do it

• Phonemic transcription:

모타는사라미

/mo.tʰa.nɯn.sa.la.mi/

• Morphophonemic transcription:

못하는사람이

|mot-ha-nɯn-sa.lam-i|

• Morpheme-by-morpheme gloss:

• Comparison of phonemic and modern morpho-phonemic orthographies:

모타는사라미

못하는 사람이

After the Gabo Reform in 1894, the Joseon Dynasty and later the Korean Empire started to write all official documents in Hangul. Under the government's management, proper usage of Hangul and Hanja, including orthography, was discussed, until Korean Empire was annexed by Japan in 1910.

The Government-General of Korea popularized the writing style of a mixture of Hanja and Hangul which was used in later Joseon dynasty. The government revised the spelling rules in 1912, 1921 and 1930, which were relatively phonemic.

The Hangul Society, originally founded by Ju Si-gyeong, announced a proposal for a new, strongly morphophonemic orthography in 1933, which became the prototype of the contemporary orthographies in both North and South Korea. After Korea was divided, the North and South revised orthographies separately. The guiding text for Hangul orthography is called Hangeul Machumbeop, whose last South Korean revision was published in 1988 by the Ministry of Education.