The shape of consonants and vowels

 

This content was taken from the book [ Learning Korean with a smile] .

 In Hangeul, the shape of consonants and vowels can also change based on the surrounding symbols, to make complete characters aesthetically pleasing. Here are a few examples: 

만 곰 긴 미 동 다 른 리 읽

As you can see , the characters are roughly equal sized, the consonants and vowels expand and contract to fill the available space.

A complication is that some consonants are pronounced differently depending on whether they appear in the beginning or at the end of a symbol. 

A good example is the consonant: 'o' . 

At the beginning of a character, it is silent , and at the end, it is pronounced as 'ng'. For example, '아' is pronounced as 'ah' , and '잉' as 'ing ' . 

Note that the symbol '잉' also is a good example for the rule we've seen earlier, that each symbol must begin with a consonant, where the initial ' o ' is that consonant.

Congratulations! After just a few minutes, you can already read some Korean characters! As for the character layout, Hangeul follows a basic rule: 

Each character must be composed in one of the nine pattersn depicted below. 

The following nine characters each correspond to one pattern.

마  만  많

구  굴   굶

외  왼   뷁

Interestingly '뷁' is the only character that we are aware of for that last pattern. As it has a derogatory meaning, you'll be unlikely to encounter it. 

As you can see from this rule, each character must begin with a consonant. Moreover, each character can only have one vowel ( although that vowel may be a double vowel as we will soon discover).