The concept of “천지인 (Cheon-Ji-In)” translating to “heaven, earth, and human”, the circle represents the round sun (heaven), the square represents the flat earth, and the triangle represents a standing human figure.
Clicking will take you to the “Squid Hangul” book on Amazon.
Koreans don’t learn Hangul by following the manual of King Sejong the Great, the creator of Hangul.
There is a painful history behind this.
Any vowel in Hangeul is a combination of these three shapes.
Monophthongs (single vowels) are combinations of these three elements. ( • , ㅡ , ㅣ)
The remaining consonants were created by adding strokes to the basic consonants.
c
v
ㄱ
ㅣ
ㄱ
ㅣ
=
g
i
c
v
ㄱ
ㅡ
ㄱ
ㅡ
=
g
eu
Hangeul’s syllables consist of a combination of consonants and vowels.
The consonants always come first, followed by the vowels.
c
v
c
ㅎ
ㅏ
ㄴ
ㅎ
ㅏ
ㄴ
=
h
a
n
c
v
c
ㄱ
ㅡ
ㄹ
ㄱ
ㅡ
ㄹ
=
g
eu
l
Instead of writing consonant and vowel letters in parallel, Hangul is written in a square shape.
If the word “한글” was written out like the English alphabet, it would look like this: ” ㅎ ㅏ ㄴ ㄱ ㅡ ㄹ “
the word ‘한글‘ would not be easily understood and the reading speed would be slow.
There is also an experiment that the reading speed is 2.5 times faster when words are combined like “한글“