Appendix · Additional Notes

12. Hangul, a universal writing system


    A feature-based writing system is a term in graphemics
    introduced by Professor Geoffrey Sampson of the University
    of Sussex in his 1985 book Writing Systems, to describe the
    unique characteristic of Hangul in which phonological
    features are directly reflected in letter shapes.
    A featural writing system visually represents the elements
    that constitute speech sounds by encoding the shapes of
    articulatory organs or the acoustic properties of sounds into
    written characters.
    Hunminjeongeum, Jeongeum, was designed so that both
    consonants and vowels were modeled on the forms of
    human speech organs and symbols of the Heaven-Human-
    Earth trinity, while variations in sound strength and quality
    were systematized through the addition or combination of
    strokes.
    For example, ㄱ was modeled after the shape of the tongue
    root blocking the throat, and by adding a stroke to ㄱ, the
    aspirated sound ㅋ was created. Owing to these featural
    characteristics, Hangul is widely regarded as the only writing
    system in the world that exhibits a scientific and systematic




    Appendix - Additional explanation                            307