Hunminjeongeum Phonetics (II): Phonetic and Phoniatric Consideration for Explanation of Designs of Initial and Final Consonant Letters

Abstract

Hunminjeongeum had 17 initial consonant letters. Among them, five consonant letters, those are ㄱ (牙音, molar sound letter), ㄴ (舌音, lingual sound letter), ㅁ(脣音, labial sound letter), ㅅ (齒音, dental sound letter), ㅇ (喉音, guttural sound letter), were served as chief consonants. There was no argument that consonant letters were made by symbolizing the shape of vocal organs during phonation of them. It could be phoniatrically explained that all of five chief consonants were morphologically symbolized from left lateral view of vocal tract during articulation. Although ‘ㄱ’ was known as molar sound, it was not modeled the shape of molar tooth but modeled the shape of tongue at molar teeth bearing area. The same principle applies to ‘ㅅ’, and it was represented the shape of upper surface of anterior tongue instead of incisor teeth. ‘ㄴ’ was a lingual sound and directly shaped the shape of tongue. ‘ㄷ’ was made by addition of a stroke ‘ㅡ’ meaning hard palate above ‘ㄴ’. ‘ㅁ’ was represented the shape of lateral view of anterior mouth. ‘ㅇ’ was looked like shaping left lateral view of laryngopharyngeal space.