Four basic letters in the original alphabet are no longer used: 1 vowel letter and 3 consonant letters.

There are also 27 complex letters that are formed by combining the basic letters: 5 tense consonant letters, 11 complex consonant letters, and 11 complex vowel letters. Modern Hangul orthography uses 24 basic letters: 14 consonant letters and 10 vowel letters. As a result, Hangul was initially denounced and disparaged by the Korean educated class. Hangul was created in 1443 CE by King Sejong the Great in an attempt to increase literacy by serving as a complement (or alternative) to the logographic Sino-Korean Hanja, which had been used by Koreans as its primary script to write the Korean language since as early as the Gojoseon period (spanning more than a thousand years and ending around 108 BCE), along with the usage of Classical Chinese. It has been described as a syllabic alphabet as it combines the features of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems, although it is not necessarily an abugida. The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs used to pronounce them, and they are systematically modified to indicate phonetic features similarly, the vowel letters are systematically modified for related sounds, making Hangul a featural writing system. The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul ( English: / ˈ h ɑː n ɡ uː l/ HAHN-gool ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language.

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