Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 September 1

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September 1

Hangul layout positioning

What determines whether a Hangul letter goes under or to the right of the letter immediately preceding it (presuming both letters are part of the same syllable block)? My current theory is that it has something to do with whether the letters in question have a more horizontal or vertical shape. I have a similar question about ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, but that might be a bit different since I suspect that I’ve seen an instance where a hieroglyph was written right under the previous hieroglyph despite the previous hieroglyph being part of a different word altogether. Primal Groudon (talk) 05:13, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Primal Groudon No, nothing to do with shape. I'm only a beginner, and I know how to do it, but not sure I know how to explain it, but basically, it's about syllables, made up of consonants and vowels, something like C-V-C, or C-V, with the vowel always after (there's a "blank" consonant you can use when a syllable starts with a vowel sound, but still has to follow a consonant). Some vowels go to the right, some on the bottom, and the final consonant, if there is one, goes under that. Then the next syllable starts all over again, on the right, with C-V-C, or C-V again. Someone who really knows Korean will do a better job than me of explaining it, and maybe give the right names for all these features, but that's basically it. Mathglot (talk) 07:21, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Surprisingly, our article Hangul does not seem to cover this. I think that both you and Mathglot are correct. Mathglot says Some vowels go to the right, some on the bottom, and that is a matter of shape. CVV (and CVVC) syllables always have a "horizontal" vowel (o, u, or eu) first, and then a vertical one to the right. The final consonant or consonants (in CVCC blocks) go at the bottom, left to right. ColinFine (talk) 10:25, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

@Primal Groudon, @ColinFine: Try Hangul#Morpho-syllabic_blocks. Bazza (talk) 10:54, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't read far enough through - when I got to "Unicode" I thought there wouldn't be any more about the script itself. ColinFine (talk) 14:19, 1 September 2023 (UTC)