Started by Samuel Okafor (@samokafor) · September 21, 2026

Hangul was designed on purpose, and the letters show your mouth

Created in the 1440s under King Sejong, explicitly so ordinary people could learn to read. The basic consonant shapes sketch the mouth: ㄱ is the back of the tongue raised, ㄴ is the tongue tip touching behind the teeth, ㅁ is the closed mouth. Reading it in a day is roughly true if you mean sounding out syllables. Understanding Korean is a much longer project.

5 sources · 36 min down the hole

• Human-computer interaction
• Typography