Korean Alphabet
Why Korean alphabet start with ㄱ?
Tradition. The traditional Chinese phonology had a custom of arranging velar sounds (아음 - ㄱ, ㅋ; g and k in English) when classifying consonants. Hunminjeongeum (훈민정음) followed this tradition and arranged the letters in order of velar (아음) - lingual (설음) - labial (순음) - dental (치음) - glottal (후음) sounds.
Philosophy. There is also a philosophical ground: In East Asian philosophy, the mechanism of the universe is believed to be governed by the cycle of five elements, starting from wood, fire, earth, metal, and finally water. Here, ㄱ and ㅋ especially correspond to “wood.” This is why ㄱ first initiates in the Korean alphabet.
While the above explains why velar sounds come first within a class, the specific ordering we use was fixed later. Its tradition originates from “Hunmongjahoe” (훈몽자회; a collection of characters for the instruction of young students) written by “Choe Sejin”. In this book, he divided the consonants into two groups according to whether they could be used as final consonants (받침). The first group is given by 8 characters (ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㆁ). And the second group includes ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅈ, which cannot be used for final consonants, since they are neutralized to ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅅ in the final position. In the medieval Korean language, it was limited to using the first group. Since the first letter in this group starts with ㄱ and then ㄴ, the Korean alphabet goes with ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, and so on.
References
- Academy of Korean Studies. Hunminjeongeum [訓民正音]. Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (2017).
- Academy of Korean Studies. Hunmongjahoe [訓蒙字會]. Encyclopedia of Korean Culture (2026).