正音, the alphabet King Sejong of Korea made in 1443, sorts its consonants by where they are made in the mouth, and it adds a stroke when a sound gets stronger. If you know the Devanagari consonants in their five rows – क, च, ट, त, प – this will feel familiar. In this post we go through the sounds of Sanskrit and Hindi one group at a time and show how each one is written in 正音. Buddhist words, yoga words and everyday Hindi words can all be written this way.
All tables and examples come from the book 《正音으로 듣고쓰다》. Some of the letters (ㆍ, ㅿ, ㆆ, ㆁ, ㅸ) are old Hangul letters that modern Korean no longer uses, and they need a font with Old Hangul support. When a spelling uses such letters, we show it in the book’s own pictures instead of typing it.
1. The whole system in one table
The table keeps the order every Indian school child knows: five places in the mouth (velar, palatal, retroflex, dental, labial) and, for each place, four stops and a nasal. The sections below read it one column at a time.
2. The four stops: voice and breath
Hindi and Sanskrit separate stops in two ways: with or without voice, and with or without a puff of breath (aspiration). 正音 shows both in the shape of the letter.
| voiceless, no breath | voiceless, breath | voiced, no breath | voiced, breath | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| velar | क k = ㄲ | ख kh = ㅋ | ग g = ㄱ | घ gh = 그 |
| palatal | च c = ㅈ + final ㆆ* | छ ch = ㅊ | ज j = ㅈ | झ jh = 즈 |
| dental | त t = ㄸ | थ th = ㅌ | द d = ㄷ | ध dh = 드 |
| labial | प p = ㅃ | फ ph = ㅍ | ब b = ㅂ | भ bh = 브 |
- Voiceless, no breath (क त प) are the doubled letters ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ: a tight, clean sound with no puff of air, like the k in English skin.
- Voiceless, with breath (ख थ फ छ) are ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅊ. The breath is one extra stroke inside the letter, so kh is one letter, not two.
- Voiced (ग द ब ज) are the plain letters ㄱ ㄷ ㅂ ㅈ.
- Voiced, with breath (घ झ ध भ) are the plain letters with a horizontal ㅡ. The ㅡ is the breathy murmur. Before a short vowel it joins the vowel inside the same block, so ध is still one syllable, just as it is one akshara. (What happens before a long vowel is in section 6.)
3. Retroflex sounds and the five nasals
Retroflex sounds (ट ठ ड ढ ण ष) are written with the dental letters plus a final ㅿ at the bottom of the block. ㅿ is an old Hangul letter; here it means “curl the tongue back.” Where IAST puts a dot under the letter (ṭ ḍ ṇ ṣ), 正音 adds ㅿ. So त and ट, or न and ण, never look the same.
The nasals are written as final consonants, at the bottom of the block, one for each place:
- ङ ṅ = ㆁ (velar)
- ञ ñ = ㄴ + ㆆ (palatal)
- ण ṇ = ㄴ + ㅿ (retroflex)
- न n = ㄴ (dental)
- म m = ㅁ (labial)
4. Semivowels, the three s-sounds and h
- य y is the glide in ㅑ ㅕ ㅛ ㅠ (य = 야).
- र r is ㄹ. Between two vowels a single ㄹ is a quick tap of the tongue, like the Hindi r.
- ल l is marked ㄹㄹ in the table. This is not a new double letter. It means that between vowels, l is written as a final ㄹ in one block plus a first ㄹ in the next block, which is how Korean writes a clear l sound. So धूलि dhūli has only one l, but its spelling 두훌.리 has two ㄹ. With one ㄹ it would read as a tapped r.
- व v/w is ㅸ, the old “light b,” or the glide ㅝ when it sounds like w.
- The three s-sounds: स s = ㅆ, ष ṣ = ㅅ with the retroflex ㅿ, and श ś = ㅅ with one extra dot. In 正音 one more dot on a vowel adds a y-glide (ㅏ → ㅑ, ㅓ → ㅕ). If ś were plain ㅅ, śa would be 사; but śa sounds like [ʃa], 샤, which has one dot more. That extra dot is what the ś letter stands for. In real words: शक्ति śakti = 샥띠, शब्द śabda = 셔브더.
- ह h = ㅎ.
5. Vowels and length: one block, one beat
In Hindi a short vowel (a, i, u) takes one beat (mātrā) and the others (ā, ī, ū, e, o, ai, au) take two. The book follows one simple rule: one 正音 block = one beat.
अ and आ. Short a is written ㅓ and long ā is written ㅏ. So तथागत tathāgata = 떠타거떠, and in Hindi बल bal (strength) = 벌 but बाल bāl (hair) = 발.
Sanskrit grammar since Pāṇini sorts vowels into three grades: the basic vowel, a middle grade (guṇa) and a strong grade (vṛddhi). Modern Hindi, Pali and Bengali have mostly lost this system. One example: in Sanskrit, u and ū differ only in length, but in Hindi short u is [ʊ] and long ū is [uː], so Hindi can tell them apart even without a length mark.
6. Breath and long vowels
The beat rule also decides where the breath of a voiced aspirate (gh, jh, ḍh, dh, bh) goes. The rule depends on the vowel that follows:
- Short vowel: the ㅡ stays inside the block, joined to the vowel (section 2).
- Long ū, ai, au: the breath gets its own beat and moves into the next block as ㅎ. भूमि bhūmi = 부후.미, धूलि dhūli = 두훌.리, भौतिक bhautika = 바후.띠꺼.
- e and o are the middle grade (guṇa). Here the breath does not move to a new block; the ㅡ stays inside, as with a short vowel. See vibheda and aghora in the picture.
The other way round, a plain consonant plus a two-beat vowel stays in one block. In IAST, ai and au take two letters, but 正音 writes each of them as one vowel, so the syllable fits in one block – just as ā ī ū e o are two-beat vowels written in one Devanagari letter with a mark on top. In modern Hindi, ai and au have become single vowels, [ɛː] and [ɔː], so Hindi ऐ is simply ㅐ, and औ is one vowel block too.
7. Anusvāra, visarga, candrabindu
- Anusvāra (ं) takes the place of the next consonant, so it is written as the nasal you actually say. In गांधी Gāndhī the next consonant ध is dental, so the dot becomes the dental nasal ㄴ: ga + ㄴ. Before क-row sounds it becomes ㆁ, before प-row sounds ㅁ. (Japanese ん works the same way.) Because anusvāra also makes the vowel nasal, the book writes the vowel a as ㆍ instead of ㅏ or ㅓ in these syllables – see saṃskṛta in the picture above.
- Visarga (ः) is a breath after the vowel. It can be written with ㅎ plus an echo of that vowel: iḥ = 히, uḥ = 후, eḥ = 헤. But it is a short sound at the end of a word, not a full syllable. Visarga means “release,” so the book also uses the wave sign that Koreans like to use in chat: दुःख duḥkha = 두~카.
- Candrabindu (ँ), a nasal vowel, is written with a final ㅎ + ㄴ, or with ㆁ as the first letter of the next syllable.
8. Everyday Hindi
Hindi has two sounds that Sanskrit did not write: the flaps ड़ ṛ and ढ़ ṛh. They began as Sanskrit ड ḍ and ढ ḍh between vowels, which grew weaker over time and became a quick retroflex flap. The dot under the letter (nuqta) only became part of Hindi spelling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 正音 the flap is a final ㄹ with the retroflex ㅿ; the breathy one adds a breath mark to it.
Sanskrit ऋ r̥ is an r that works as a vowel. In Vedic chanting it is a trilled r; in classical Sanskrit and fast speech it became a single tap. Today only South Indian chanting keeps the vowel-like r. In Hindi it sounds like ri, so कृष्ण is said like “Krishna,” and in Marathi and Gujarati it sounds like ru. The spellings for kr̥ṣṇa and gr̥ha in the picture show the South Indian chanting sound.
In Hindi, the length of a consonant alone can change the meaning of a word. Double consonants are written by closing one block and opening the next:
| Single consonant | Double consonant |
|---|---|
| पता patā (address) = 뻐따 | पत्ता pattā (leaf) = 뻗따 |
| बचा bacā (left over) = 버짜 | बच्चा baccā (child) = 벚짜 |
| मल mal (dirt) = 멀 | मल्ल malla (wrestler) = 멀르 |
| रस ras (juice) = 라쓰 | रस्सी rassī (rope) = 랏씨 |
9. Buddhist and yoga words
With these rules, words that travelled out of India with Buddhism and yoga can be written as they sound in Sanskrit.
A few of them in plain text:
- प्रज्ञा prajñā (wisdom) = 쁘러갸 – ज्ञ is a common joined consonant, read as gya or as jña; the picture shows both
- हेतु-प्रत्यय hetu-pratyaya (cause and condition) = 헤뚜-쁘러땨야
- तथागत tathāgata (the Thus-come One) = 떠타거떠
- सुभूति Subhūti = 쑤부후.띠
- शक्ति śakti = 샥띠
- दुःख duḥkha (suffering) = 두~카
The book adds a note on duḥkha, taken from a Korean study of the Heart Sutra: duḥ means “bad” and kha means “hole,” the hole for a cart’s axle. When the hole does not fit the axle, the wheel creaks, and that creaking is suffering. By chance, the same picture appears in the 1446 book that explained 正音: in its preface, Jeong In-ji describes the pain of a people whose speech did not fit the Chinese letters they had to write it with.
10. Same letters, different regions
Indian languages share almost the same consonants, but their vowels drift as the distance between regions grows. Here is how seven languages say six vowels:
Because 正音 writes what is heard, the consonants stay the same and only the vowels change to match each region, as the pratiṣṭhitaḥ example above shows. India has also tried to solve this from the other side: the Bharati Script, made by a team at IIT Madras, takes the common structure of Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia and other Indian scripts and builds one shared script from it. It is still not widely used.
Read more
- 산스크리트와 데바나가리(Devanagari) – Sanskrit and Devanagari (Korean)
- Devanagari(아부기다)와 일본문자(음절문자) – Devanagari and Japanese kana compared with 正音 (Korean)
- Hangul, Upside Down – how the consonants picture the mouth
- A Compass Made of Vowels – the vowels