Hangul

Hangul (??) is the native alphabet used to write the Korean language, as opposed to the Hanja system borrowed from China. For other Romanized spellings of "Hangul", please see Names below.

Names

Official names

• The modern name Hangul (??) is a term coined by Ju Si-gyeong in 1912 that simultaneously means great script in archaic Korean and Korean script in modern Korean. It cannot be written in Hanja, though the first syllable, Han (?), if used in the sense of the word Korean, may be written ?. It is pronounced {{IPA|}} (IPA), and has been Romanized in the following ways:
• Hangeul or Han-geul in the Revised Romanization of Korean, which the South Korean government uses in all English publications and encourages for all purposes. Many recent publications have adopted this spelling.
• Han'g?l in McCune-Reischauer. When used as an English word, it is often rendered without the diacritics: Hangul, or sometimes without capitalization: hangul. This is how it appears in many English dictionaries.
• Hankul in Yale Romanization, another common spelling in English dictionaries.
• The original name was Hunmin Jeong-eum (see History)
• North Koreans prefer to call it Chos?n'g?l (???), for reasons related to the different Names of Korea.

Other names

• Jeong-eum, short for the official Hunmin Jeong-eum (????; ????). (See History)
• Urigeul (??? "our script") is used in both the North and South, but not by non-Koreans.

Until the early twentieth century, Hangul was often denigrated by those who preferred the traditional Hanja writing. They gave it names such as:

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• Eonmun (?? ?? "vernacular script").
• Amkeul (?? "women's script"). ?-(probably derived from ?) is a prefix that signifies a noun is feminine.
• Ahaegeul (??? "children's script").

However, the use of Hanja in writing has become rare in the past several decades in South Korea, and has been banned in North Korea, so these names are considered archaic.

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