Lost Language
Lost Language
When King Sejong the Great invented Hangul in 1443 to increase literacy among commoners, the alphabet included several letters designed to capture specific Middle Korean and Chinese pronunciations. As the spoken language shifted, these sounds disappeared, making the letters obsolete.
Arae-a (ㆍ)
This vowel, drawn as a simple dot, represented a deep, rounded sound between "a" (아) and "o" (오). Over centuries, speakers naturally shifted this pronunciation to "a" or "eu," and the letter was officially removed from standard orthography in 1933.
Bansiot (ㅿ)
Shaped like a triangle, this consonant represented a buzzy, voiced "z" sound. By the late 16th century, the "z" sound completely vanished from the Korean phonology, either turning into an "s" sound or going entirely silent.
Yesieung (ㆁ)
This looked like the modern circular ieung (ㅇ) but with a small vertical stroke on top. Originally, the plain circle (ㅇ) was only used as a silent placeholder at the start of a syllable, while the yesieung (ㆁ) was used for the "ng" sound at the end. Because they looked so similar, writers often confused them, and by the 17th century, they officially merged into the single modern character (ㅇ).
Yeorin-hieut (ㆆ)
Known as the "glottal stop" (like the catch in the throat in the English "uh-oh"), this letter was used briefly to accurately transcribe Chinese pronunciations or to indicate a tensed consonant. It fell out of use by the late 15th century as writers found it unnecessary for native Korean speech.
Before the peninsula was unified, different regions spoke vastly different Koreanic languages. Even in modern times, standardization has pushed historical dialects to the brink.
The Languages of Goguryeo and Baekje
During the Three Kingdoms period (ending in 668 CE), the kingdoms of Goguryeo (north), Baekje (southwest), and Silla (southeast) likely spoke distinct, though related, languages. When Silla unified the peninsula, the Silla dialect became the foundation for Old Korean. The languages of Goguryeo and Baekje were slowly assimilated and lost, leaving modern linguists with only fragmented records of their vocabulary.
The Jeju Language (Jejueo)
Often mistakenly called a dialect, the language spoken on Jeju Island is so structurally and phonetically distinct that speakers from the mainland cannot understand it. Isolated from the mainland, Jeju retained much of the Middle Korean vocabulary and grammar that Seoul lost over the centuries, including the active use of the Arae-a (ㆍ) vowel. Today, it is critically endangered. A combination of the 1948 Jeju Uprising (which devastated the local population), mainland media, and a modern education system that enforced standard Seoul Korean has driven Jejueo to the brink of extinction, now mostly spoken only by the elderly islanders.