ㆍ
하늘
Heaven
a single dot, the seed of every 아·오·야·요
Each consonant is a small architectural specimen, modelled after the speaker’s vocal tract. Hover any vitrine to lift the jamo and reveal, in drafting blue, the original mouth-diagram from the Hunminjeongeum Haerye.
Three primitives stand at the top: ㆍ heaven, ㅡ earth, ㅣ human. Hover a primitive to draw the family-tree connectors out toward its derived vowels in pencil-blue line.
Three positions 초성 · 중성 · 종성 snap together along a hairline axis to form one square syllable. The dotted lines are technical-drawing convention, never decoration.
“The sounds of our country’s tongue are different from the Middle Kingdom’s. Therefore, even if the foolish wish to speak, many in the end cannot express their meanings. Pitying this, I have newly designed twenty-eight letters, that everyone may learn them easily, and use them conveniently in their daily lives.”
— King Sejong, preface to the Hunminjeongeum, 1446
printer’s mark, eight trigrams around ㆍ