Obsolete Hangul Letters: the Four Lost Jamo

These letters are part of the history of Hangul. You do not need them to read modern Korean, but they explain several puzzles in today's alphabet, such as why ㅇ has two jobs.

What Are Obsolete Hangul Letters?

Obsolete Hangul letters are letters that appear in 15th-century Korean texts but are no longer used in standard spelling. The term usually means the four basic letters ㆍ, ㅿ, ㆆ and ㆁ. Linguists call the language of those texts Middle Korean, the stage of Korean spoken from roughly the 10th to the 16th century.

Each of the four letters stood for a real sound of Middle Korean:

• ㆍ (아래아, arae-a): a vowel, probably between "aw" and "uh".
• ㅿ (반시옷, bansiot): a consonant, probably a z-like buzz.
• ㆆ (여린히읗, yeorinhieut): a consonant, probably a glottal stop, the catch in "uh-oh".
• ㆁ (옛이응, yesieung): a consonant, the ng sound of "sing".

The letters fell out of use at different times, for different reasons. To see where they fitted, start with the full original set.

From 28 Letters to 24

The 1446 Hunminjeongeum introduced 17 consonants and 11 vowels. Three consonants and one vowel later disappeared, leaving 14 consonants and 10 vowels: the 24 basic letters of today.

This is why counts of how many letters the Korean alphabet has differ: 28 for the original system, 24 for the modern basic letters, and 40 when double consonants and compound vowels are counted.

Notice where ㆍ sits: first in the vowel list. In the original design, ㆍ was the round "heaven" dot, ㅡ the flat "earth" and ㅣ the upright "human", and every other vowel was built from them. Losing ㆍ as a vowel did not remove the dot from the alphabet; it lives on as the short stroke in ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅗ and ㅜ. Before looking at each letter, it helps to know how anyone can tell what a lost letter sounded like.

How Do We Know What the Lost Letters Sounded Like?

Scholars reconstruct the lost sounds from four kinds of evidence; no recording exists, so every value on this page is a reconstruction.

1. The 1446 Haerye. The Hunminjeongeum Haerye describes each letter's place in the mouth and its relation to other letters, for example that ㆍ is made with the tongue drawn back.
2. Chinese character readings. The letters were used to spell Sino-Korean readings, which can be compared with Chinese rhyme dictionaries.
3. Later spelling changes. When writers start confusing ㆍ with ㅏ, the two sounds have probably merged.
4. Modern dialects. Words that kept a sound in one region, such as Jeju, show what it may once have been.

Phonetic symbols in the cards below use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a standard set of symbols for speech sounds. Each card has the same six rows, starting with the vowel.

ㆍ Arae-a: the Lost Vowel

Arae-a (ㆍ) is the obsolete vowel written as a single dot. Its name, 아래아, means "lower a": the usual explanation is that in traditional syllable charts it was listed after, or "below", ㅏ.

The word for "sky" shows both stages of the loss in one word. Middle Korean ᄒᆞᄂᆞᆯ had arae-a twice. The second one, in a later syllable, became ㅡ first: 늘. The first one, in the opening syllable, became ㅏ later: 하. The result is modern 하늘.

Writers kept the letter ㆍ in spelling for a long time after the sound had changed, out of habit. The Korean Language Society's Unified Hangul Spelling System (한글 맞춤법 통일안) of 1933 removed it from standard spelling.

Does Jeju Still Use Arae-A?

Yes, to a degree. The Jeju language, spoken on Jeju Island, is widely reported to keep a distinct arae-a vowel, pronounced roughly [ɒ], especially among older speakers. Jeju writing often uses ㆍ for it: the Jeju word for "horse" is written ᄆᆞᆯ, where standard Korean has 말. Younger speakers increasingly use standard Korean, so the vowel is less common than it once was. The next letter disappeared much earlier.

ㅿ Bansiot: a Soft Z-Like Sound

Bansiot (ㅿ) is the obsolete consonant shaped like ㅅ with a flat base. Its name, 반시옷, means "half siot"; it is also called 반치음 (banchieum), "half tooth sound".

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ㅿ appeared mostly between vowels, the position where a soft s-sound easily becomes a buzz. When the sound weakened and vanished, words simply lost a consonant. Middle Korean 아ᅀᆞ (younger sibling) became 아우, and ᄆᆞᅀᆞᆷ (heart, mind) became 마음.

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Some southern dialects took the other path and turned ㅿ into ㅅ, which is why Gyeongsang speakers may say 가실 for autumn. The third lost letter was the shortest-lived of all.

ㆆ Yeorinhieut: the Glottal Stop

Yeorinhieut (ㆆ) is the obsolete consonant shaped like ㅎ without its top stroke. Its name, 여린히읗, means "weak hieut".

ㆆ was used mostly to spell Chinese character readings in the idealised system of the 1448 dictionary Dongguk Jeong-un (동국정운), which tried to bring Korean readings of characters closer to Chinese rhyme-book categories. Native Korean barely used the sound. When that reading system was abandoned in the late 15th century, ㆆ had almost nothing left to write, so it disappeared within a few decades of its creation. The last lost letter, by contrast, did not vanish but merged.

ㆁ Yesieung: the Original Ng

Yesieung (ㆁ) is the obsolete consonant shaped like ㅇ with a small stroke on top. Its name, 옛이응, means "old ieung".

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In Middle Korean, ㆁ could start a syllable as well as end one. In 이ᅌᅥ (carp), the ng sound began the second syllable. Modern 잉어 keeps the same sound but moves it to the end of the first syllable, written with ordinary ㅇ.

Why Is Modern ㅇ Silent at the Start?

Modern ㅇ is silent at the start of a syllable and [ng] at the end because it now does the work of two old letters. Old ㅇ was a silent placeholder, used where a syllable began with a vowel, as in 아. Old ㆁ was the ng consonant. Once ng no longer appeared at the start of syllables, writers no longer needed two shapes, and the plain circle took over both jobs.

The merger explains the two jobs of the letter ㅇ: 아 starts with no consonant, while 강 ends in [ng]. The position tells you which job the letter is doing.

The Four Lost Letters Compared

The four lost letters disappeared over about four and a half centuries, from the late 15th century to the 1933 spelling reform.

The pattern is clear: three letters disappeared because their sounds left the language, and one, ㆁ, survived as a sound but lost its separate shape.

Worked Example: Reading ᄆᆞᅀᆞᆷ

Reading a Middle Korean word with lost letters takes four steps. Take ᄆᆞᅀᆞᆷ, the 15th-century spelling of 마음 ("heart, mind").

1. Split the blocks. ᄆᆞ + ᅀᆞᆷ: two syllables, as in the modern word.
2. Find the lost letters. The first block has ㅁ + ㆍ. The second has ㅿ + ㆍ + ㅁ.
3. Apply the changes. First-syllable ㆍ became ㅏ, so ᄆᆞ → 마. ㅿ vanished, so the second block needs silent ㅇ. Later-syllable ㆍ became ㅡ, so ᅀᆞᆷ → 음.
4. Join the result. 마 + 음 = 마음.

The same four steps turn ᄀᆞᅀᆞᆯ into 가을 and ᄒᆞᄂᆞᆯ into 하늘. They work for many common words, though not all: some words changed in other ways too, so check a historical dictionary before relying on the pattern.

Practice: Match Old and Modern Spellings

Match each Middle Korean spelling with its modern word: (a) 아ᅀᆞ, (b) 이ᅌᅥ, (c) ᄒᆞᄂᆞᆯ, (d) ᄀᆞᅀᆞᆯ. Choices: 하늘, 가을, 잉어, 아우.

Answers: (a) 아우, younger sibling: ㅿ vanished and ㆍ became ㅜ in this word, an example of a word that took its own path. (b) 잉어, carp: ㆁ became final ㅇ. (c) 하늘, sky. (d) 가을, autumn.

Why Did the Letters Disappear?

The letters disappeared because Korean pronunciation changed, and an alphabet that writes sounds eventually follows its sounds. Hangul was designed in 1443 to record the Korean of its day. As that Korean became Early Modern Korean, some sounds merged and others dropped out, and the matching letters lost their work.

Three mechanisms were involved:

• Merger. Two sounds became one, so one letter became unnecessary: ㆍ merged with ㅏ and ㅡ; ㆁ's shape merged with ㅇ.
• Loss. A sound weakened until it disappeared, as ㅿ did between vowels.
• Policy change. A sound used only in an artificial reading system lost its purpose when the system was dropped, as with ㆆ.

Spelling usually lags behind speech. Arae-a is the clearest case: its sound had changed by the 18th century, but the letter stayed in many spellings until the 1933 reform. The four letters did not vanish from view entirely, though.

Other Old Letters beyond the Four

The four obsolete letters are the ones from the basic list of 28, but 15th-century texts also used combined letters that are now gone. They are built from basic letters, so they are not counted among the 28.

• ㅸ (가벼운비읍, light bieup): ㅂ with ㅇ beneath, probably a soft b-like sound made with the lips barely touching ([β]).
• ㆅ and ㆀ: doubled ㅎ and doubled ㅇ, used in a few 15th-century spellings.
• Clusters at the start of a syllable: Middle Korean wrote combinations such as ㅄ and ㅴ at the beginning of words, as in ᄢᅢ for "sesame", which became 깨.

These forms show that the 15th-century script was larger and more varied than the modern one. Specialists still use all of them, which leads to the question of where old letters appear today.

Where Can You Still See Them?

You can still see obsolete letters in four places in Korea today:

• Historical texts and museums. Reprints of 15th-century books, and displays such as those at the National Hangeul Museum in Seoul, show the full original letter set.
• Jeju Island. Signs, menus and local writing use ㆍ for the Jeju vowel, as in ᄆᆞᆯ.
• Brand names and shop signs. Some businesses use ㆍ to give a name an old or traditional look. The sign is normally read as if the dot were ㅏ.
• Linguistics and education. Korean literature classes study Middle Korean poems, such as passages from the 1447 Yongbieocheonga (용비어천가), in their original spelling.

Can You Type Obsolete Hangul Letters?

Yes. Obsolete letters are encoded in Unicode, both as stand-alone letters (for example ㆍ is U+318D) and as conjoining jamo that combine into old syllable blocks. Old syllables such as ᄒᆞᆫ are not stored as single characters; they are built from parts, so you need a font that supports old Hangul and an input method with an old-Hangul mode. The details of encoding are covered in Hangul in Unicode.

Do Learners Need These Letters?

No. Learners do not need obsolete letters for modern Korean: no word in standard spelling uses them, apart from decorative shop signs, and the TOPIK exam does not test them. You can safely skip this topic until you are reading Korean comfortably.

There are still three reasons a curious learner might spend ten minutes on them:

1. They explain ㅇ. The ㆁ merger is the reason one letter is silent at the start and ng at the end.
2. They explain the vowel strokes. The dot of ㆍ is the source of the short strokes in ㅏ and ㅗ.
3. They help with Jeju and old texts. If you visit Jeju or study Korean literature, you will meet ㆍ in real writing.

Back to the present: learn the modern consonants first, and return to old letters later as background.

Common Misconceptions about Obsolete Letters

• "The letters were removed by a king." Actually most of them faded as speech changed; only ㆍ was formally dropped, by a spelling reform in 1933.
• "Arae-a is just another way to write ㅏ." Actually ㆍ was a separate vowel with its own sound. Reading it as ㅏ is a modern convention for signs.
• "We know exactly how they sounded." Actually the IPA values are reconstructions, and scholars still debate some of them, especially for ㆍ.
• "Modern Hangul is incomplete without them." Actually the 24 modern letters cover every sound of modern standard Korean.

Limits of What We Know

The history of the obsolete letters rests on written evidence, and that evidence has gaps. Sound values are reconstructed, not heard. Dates of loss are approximate, because a sound can change in speech decades before writers stop using its letter, and the change did not happen at the same time in every region. Claims about Jeju arae-a come from dialect studies whose results vary with the age and village of the speakers. Treat every date and IPA symbol on this page as the best current estimate.

In short, obsolete Hangul letters are a record of how Korean has changed since 1446, and the four lost jamo still shape how the 24 modern letters work.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ㆍ the same as the dot in ㅏ? Historically, yes. In 1446 the vowel ㆍ was a round dot standing for heaven, and the same dot was added to the lines ㅡ and ㅣ to build ㅗ, ㅏ, ㅜ and ㅓ. Printers and writers later turned the dot into a short stroke. The stroke in modern ㅏ descends from it, but ㆍ alone is no longer a vowel.

Why do some shop signs use ㆍ? Mainly for style. ㆍ makes a name look old, traditional or local, much as "Ye Olde" does in English. It is especially common in Jeju, where the arae-a vowel survives in the local language. A sign written with ㆍ is usually read with ㅏ in standard Korean, so ᄒᆞᆫ is read 한.

Did ㅿ become ㅅ or ㅇ? In standard Korean ㅿ mostly vanished, leaving no consonant, so the space it left is filled by silent ㅇ: Middle Korean ᄀᆞᅀᆞᆯ became 가을 (autumn). In some southern dialects the same words have ㅅ instead, such as 가실 or 가슬 for autumn and 마실 for village. Both outcomes come from the same lost sound.

Is there an obsolete double letter like ㅸ? Yes, but it was not one of the 28 basic letters. ㅸ, called 가벼운비읍 (light bieup), was made by writing ㅇ under ㅂ and probably stood for a soft b-like sound between the lips. 15th-century texts also used doubled letters such as ㆅ and ㆀ. These combinations disappeared too, but they are counted separately from the four lost letters.

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