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APPENDIX TO CHAPTER
VII
443
However, the Christian missionaries, who were the first to realize that Ön-mun was better adapted to their use than the cumbersome Chinese characters, and more easily taught to the illiterate people, published many of their books in it, including the New Testament, grammars and dictionaries. In 1895, the official Gazette, which hitherto had been printed only in Chinese characters, adopted a combination of the Ön-mun and Chinese, and for some time before the Japanese occupation (in 1910) all public edicts were in the Ön-mun as well as in the Chinese characters. More recently, the desire for a pure Chinese education practically vanished, and Ön-mun has received much attention, especially after education was completely re-organized. Nowadays, it is generally used in schools.
Vowels and Consonants (Fig. 195, 6)
Ön-mun consists of 25 letters, of which 11 are vowels and 14 consonants. Each consonant and each vowel has its own symbol. The letters are written in syllables arranged, under Chinese influence, in vertical columns, written from top to bottom; the columns consequently follow each other from right to left (as in Chinese). Of the 14 consonants, eight letters seem to be the basic consonants, and each one of them has its name. They are k (kiök), n (iün or mün), t (tjigüt), l-r (iül or riül or nil), m (miam), p (piop), s (siot or shiot), ng (ihäng), the last being a nasal sound only used at the close of a syllable. All these consonants are used both before and after the vowels. Also the letter ch (pronounced as in "church") has its name (chaat), but, like the letter and the four remaining consonants, it is used only before the vowels. These remaining consonants, kh, th, ph and chh, are strongly aspirated sounds, and are represented by the signs k, t, p and ch, modified by the addition of a horizontal dash. Also ch is only a variation of s. Previously, there was also a special sign, in the shape of a small triangle (A) for a sound like a palatal n or a weak nasalized y, but it has disappeared long ago.
The eleven vowels are usually placed under the name of i between s and ng. They are a, ya, ö, yo, o, yo, u, yu, i-u, i, and a short a; the letters ya, yo, yo, and yu being merely modifications (by the addition of a dash or stroke) of the letters a, a, o and u. Besides, by the addition of the stroke of the letter i to the other vowel signs, the diphthongs ai, öi, yöi, oa, and others, are obtained. These are considered as special vowels and are sometimes pronounced as single vowels. The vowels have two forms, the full form and the abbreviated one, the former being used when the vowel is initial. The whole alphabet is reducible to 10 basic consonants and 6 vowels.
Is the Korean Alphabet Perfect?
The Korean alphabet is the only native alphabet of the Far East. Some scholars consider it as the most perfect phonetic system "that has
