Syllable Phonetic Input System with One Keyboard
For All the Languages of the World
By Matthew Ahn (Ahnmatae), Researcher
Ahnmatae Research Institute of KCS, Inc.
8633 Knott Ave. Buena Park, CA, USA
714-849-9458, ahnmatae@kcservices.org
(Abstract) In 1443, King Sejong of Korea invented one of the most scientifically based writing
systems in the history of mankind. This system, perhaps due to benign neglect, has never been
recognized for its scientific value. This paper examines the scientific value of King Sejong’s
writing system and explains how this system can be implemented and applied to other languages
besides Korean (Feature Syllables), including Chinese (Ideographic Syllables) and English
(Latin Alphabets).
1. Introduction
King Sejong’s writing system invention was named Jeung-Eum (Right Sound) because it
accurately depicted all the sounds in nature. According to the author Jeung Inji “Introduction to
the Hunmin Jeung-Eum”, written in 1447, King Sejong thought that there should be a writing
system suitable enough to capture all natural sounds. Further, because all human languages are
also a part of sounds in nature, the writing system King Sejong proposed should depict all sounds
existing in human languages. Jeung Inji records how Jeung-Eum’s basic consonants and vowels
were invented, how they are used, pronounced and composed as syllabic characters.
Jeung-Eum is also known as Hangeul (Hangul). This term, Hangul, is only used in South Korea.
North Korea calls the Korean written language system, ChosunGeul and in China, it is called
ChoseunMun. Jeung-Eum is the original term for the Korean writing system and perhaps the
most politically neutral. Hence, this paper will use the term Jeung-Eum.
2. Jeung Eum as a Syllable Writing System
Jeung-Eum, invented in an era when the brush was the primary writing instrument, is essentially
a syllable based writing system. In the modern, keyboard input age; the first user of Jeung-Eum
on a typewriter was a Korean-American by the name of Lee Wonik. Lee Wonik invented a
typewriter to teach English to the Korean laborers working on the Hawaii Islands in 1910.
Because this typewriter was invented by an English alphabet user, the input method was English
language based – serially. The Korean syllable character was only produced at the output stage.
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In the more recent computer era, the input system for Korean has remained the same way as
English, serially. However, the Korean language was never meant to be written serially. Korean
characters are syllabic in nature and words can be misconstrued if not presented syllabically.
Hence, even though the Korean alphabet is input serially in the modern age, computers are able
to compose the characters syllabically and are able to output pre-composed syllable characters.
3. Innovative, but Confusing Ideas.
In 1949, the late Dr. Gong, Byungwoo, an ophthalmologist, with the help of another Korean
inventor, Mr. Song Kijoo, invented a new typewriting system. This innovative new Korean
typewriting system of Dr. Gong had one set of initial consonants on the right side of the
keyboard, vowels in the middle, and the trailing consonants on the left side of the keyboard array.
Dr. Gong’s typewriter was very popular until the 1960’s when the Korean military dictatorial
government abolished it in the name of standardizing the keyboard array in 1969.
However, Dr. Gong’s typewriting keyboard array continued to remain relevant in the computer
keyboard era. His system, instead of using the automata and outputting of pre-composed Korean
syllables, allowed for the output of each Korean Alphabet onto different positions of square
syllables, Hence, each Korean alphabet sits on different locations within the syllable characters.
Although Dr. Gong’s three set keyboard idea was innovative, it was confusing to English
alphabet oriented users because it involved more keys, 58 of them in all, rather than the 26 keys
for English, 33 keys for the South Korean standard keyboard and 31 North Korean standards.
Also, the syllable characters used looked odd to those used to rectangular pre-composed syllable
characters. Though Dr. Gong’s system was efficient with a very high speed input system, and
though this system remains on almost all Korean language processors, few users have truly
embraced it.
4. Input System and Character Coding Confusion through Wrong Standardization
In 1969, the South Korean military government declared a four set Korean alphabet keyboard
(one set of initial consonants, two set of vowels and one set of trailing consonants) as the
typewriter standard. Within 14 years of forced use, this keyboard was de-standardized in 1983
and is no longer used.
In 1982, another military government imposed the 2 set keyboard array (one set of consonants
and one set of vowels) as the national standard for computers. This was a slightly modified
version of 2 set standards of 1969 for Korean teletype machines, which was originally invented
by the US military during World War II for English.
This standardized 2 set array has 33 key positions and does not represent the scientific
characteristics of Jeung-Eum. This array has caused many problems, particularly in coding
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systems. Currently, this system creates the second largest code spaces in ISO 60646 and
Unicode pages after Chinese code pages.
All of this uncertainty and confusion around the keyboard is caused by a fundamental lack of
understanding of Jeung-Eum, a scientifically designed writing system. Both the North and South
Korean government standards are designed as if Jeung-Eum is a language following the same
premises as English.
Furthermore, the advancement of more innovative input systems, such as the Ahnmatae Phonetic
Keyboard (APK) system is stalled due to this basic lack of understanding. APK was endorsed by
KAIST scholars in 2003 as the second alternative standard in South Korea. Leading scientists in
North Korea and China agreed.
5. The Creation of Jeung Eum
No one knew how Jeung-Eum was invented before the 1940’s; when a book by Cheung Inji
called “Explanations to Hoon Min Jeung Eum” was discovered. Before the discovery, some
thought that Jeung-Eum mimicked other writing systems or depicted what was seen in nature.
Cheung Inji (1396-1478) explained that Jeung-Eum was invented to depict the five shapes
created by the human sound organ for consonants, to create two symbols of cosmology plus
man’s inter-relationship with those symbols (dot for sun, horizontal line for earth and vertical
line for man).
Cheung Inji explained that by adding a horizontal line above basic consonants, aspirational
sounds were depicted and by adding a dot on this aspirated sound, harsh sounds were depicted
(i.e., ㅅ(s) sound, ㅈ (j) sound and ㅊ (ch) sound).
He also explained that by adding basic vowels in combination with consonants, will create
numerous different sound values.
(Copied from KAIST AI Lab. Presentation slide)
6. Jeung-Eum as Feature Syllables
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Basic consonants: (English alphabets in parenthesis are sound values)
Name of
Organ
Shape for
Such Symbol
Lips
Shape of opened mouth
Teeth
Tongue Tip
Aspirated
Sound
Harsh
Sound
ㅁ (m)
ㅂ (b)
ㅍ (p)
Sharp upright teeth
ㅅ (s)
ㅈ (j)
ㅊ (ch)
Touching upper palate
ㄴ (n)
ㄷ (d)
ㅌ(t)
Tongue Root Touching inner upper palate
ㄱ (g)
ㅋ (k)
ㄹ(r, l)
Throat
ㅇ (silent or ng)
Round shaped tube
Shape of
Basic Jamo
ㅎ (h)
Basic vowels used:
Three essence of the universe:
. = Sun, symbol of sky and universe (天)
ㅡ= Earth, horizontal view of the earth (地)
ㅣ = Man, upright posture of man (人)
With these three essence, six (6) basic vowels can be created ㅏ(a), ㅓ(eo), ㅗ(o), ㅜ(u),
ㅡ(eu), ㅣ(i) and four (4) diacritical or iotized vowels ㅑ(ya), ㅕ(yeo), ㅛ(yo), ㅠ(yoo).
With these vowels plus other vowels, up to three of them will create numerous different
vowels with different sound values.
With these hundreds and thousands of leading consonant(s), vowel(s), with or without
trailing consonants, one can create approximately 300,000,000 syllabic characters.
Conjoin Leading consonants and medial Vowel(s), with or without Trailing consonant(s),
(i.e. L+V, or L+V+T), all can be found in the Unicode Book.
7. Perfect Jeung-Eum Phonetic Symbols
Jeung- Eum, was designed not only to feature syllables, but also to phoneticize syllables.
Because each alphabet in Jeung-Eum has only one sound value, the syllables created are accurate
phonetically (i.e. while English ‘A’ has 11 different sound values, Jeung-Eum ‘A’ has only one
sound value of ‘Ah’). Furthermore, because each Jeung-Eum alphabet has only one sound value,
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learning to read and write Jeung-Eum syllabic characters is possible in a very short period of
time.
The above illustration published in the Orange County Register, author Eric Carpenter, and
describes the ease in learning the writing system and how accurately English can be depicted
with Jeung-Eum. The Orange County Register published an article about Matthew Ahn and the
Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard.
8. Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard Proves the Scientific Characteristics of Jeung-Eum
Necessity is the mother of invention. So was the evolution of the Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard.
In 1977, Matthew Y. Ahn, founded Korean Community Services, Inc. in Hollywood, California.
Because of the need to provide information to newly migrating Koreans, Korean Community
Services began publishing a monthly Korean language magazine.
However, processing Korean type on English based machines proved difficult. The first
unsuccessful attempt was to drive a manually operated photo composition machine with the
Apple PC. This composition machine which had a manual operating system with a large number
of Korean fonts on flat glass plates proved difficult to use. The second attempt involved driving
a high speed photo composition machine, originally developed by Dr. Gong. Korean
Community Services purchased the Korean font and the software from Dr. Gong to use it on an
English composition machine which had round spinning fonts in high speed. There were two
basic problems. First, the composed syllable characters were odd looking. To solve this
problem, another programmer was hired to modify the program and to make extra fonts of precomposed syllable characters (one hundred most frequently used syllables). The second problem
was that staff disliked using the Gong Keyboard as it was difficult to learn. Furthermore, they
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were accustomed to the Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard which only had half the key numbers of
the Gong system. The quest to perfect a keyboard input and processing system drove the
development of the Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard.
Aiding in the process and worth mentioning is the assistance from Matthew Ahn’s high school
classmate, Yoo, Kyunghee, who was the first head of the Korean Language Processing Society.
Mr. Yoo was able to forward from South Korea, a limited edition of “Hangul and Hanja
Frequency Study Report”. This report was top secret material compiled by the military
government and access to it provided for research data in the development of the Ahnmatae
Phonetic Keyboard.
9.
Jeung-Eum
was Designed to Perfectly Record Sound
Dr. Han Taedong, a retired theologian from Yonsei University, Seoul authored the book,
“Phonology of Sejong Era”. In it, he explained that King Sejong and his court scholars
deliberately designed the basic consonants to be modeled after the same notes of the five sounds
of bamboo flutes in the Fifteenth Century.
When he has tested with a sonogram the five basic consonants, the following astonishing results
were obtained.
Basic Consonants, Cm. from Voice Box Predicted Hz Actual Hz 1st Octave 2nd Octave
ㅁ
15.5cm
2300 Hz
2270 Hz
4500 Hz
7000 Hz
ㅅ
13.5
2600 Hz
2500 Hz
5000 Hz
7500 Hz
ȯ
11.5
3000 Hz
3000 Hz
6000 Hz
9000 Hz
ㄴ
13.5
3405 Hz
3500 Hz
7000 Hz
ㅇ
11.5
3937 Hz
4000 Hz
8000 Hz
Basic vowels Base Hz Compared spectral formants-mouth Compared spectral formantsthroat
.
70-100
4/3
2/3
ㅡ
70-100
1
1
ㅣ
70-100
2/3
3/2
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10.
Ahnmatae
Phonetic Keyboard – An Exact Phonetic Syllable Input System
A scientifically designed writing system, such as Jeung-Eum, should be depicted using a
scientifically based input system. Currently, the input system is based on the non-scientific
writing system of English. Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard, aka Ortho-Phonetic Keyboard array
is designed to be firmly rooted in and inspired from the scientific and logical basis of Jeung-Eum.
Currently, the Ortho-Phonetic Keyboard Array allows for input similar to the English short-hand
input system - simultaneously. One can use all fingers as if playing with a piano keyboard
creating musical chords;
The first phonetic syllable simultaneous input system was developed in Yanji, China, by Mr.
Kim Kwang of Yanbian University in 1999. This version of the system was developed to be
used on Are-A Hangul and used mechanical language as developing tools.
The second version was developed in 2003 at KAIST, UI Lab, under the leadership of Prof. Kim
Jin Young, to be used on Microsoft IME. This version directly linked keyboard signals to the
stored character code numbers to access Korean pre-composed syllable characters. Since then,
numerous experts in South Korea have developed their own versions for public use using the
logic behind the Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard. Some are very popular now, including the
Senaru and Nalgeset versions.
The third version of the Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard was developed by PIC of North Korea.
After developing a Chinese Hanji input system, developers accumulated experience and learned
new techniques that they came up with a newer version of the AnUm Korean IME version. This
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version not only shows each syllable character using one stroke, but also creates a beautiful
sound of a human female voice while the character appears.
The fourth version is under development by Dr. Hyun YongUn of China and his software
Development Company in Yanji, which has experience developing onto tablet systems. This
version is being developed with Google’s input program language. Matthew Ahn seeks to
demonstrate this version at the August, 2012 ICMIC meeting at Yanji, China.
Soon after this current Yanji Team completes the Korean version, Matthew Ahn will be seeking
to request development of Chinese and English language input for US educators who are eagerly
awaiting such products.
The English writing system uses Latin Alphabets which originated from Greek. The term
“alphabet” derives from the Greek terms “Alpha and Beta”. The Greek alphabet originated from
the Phoenician writing system, which was originally an idiographic writing system or
pictographic writing system, similar to the current Chinese writing system. During the
conversion and evolution from one language to others, these idiographic characters (Latin
alphabets) were given different sound values; hence, it is extremely difficult to learn the exact
pronunciation in each language. Despite this unwieldy and inexact nature of the English
language, the corresponding alphabets are used as the medium for the input system such as
Chinese and Japanese. The Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard, with its simultaneous input system,
uses the exact and scientific nature of Jeung-Eum, and can be applied to multiple languages in
the world.
11.
Conclusion.
Because of the aforementioned reasons, the confusion surrounding coding of Jeung-Eum, the
perfect nature of Jeung-Eum language in recording sounds, and the underlying scientific basis of
Jeung-Eum applied to the Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard system, the Ahnmatae systems should
become the standard as soon as possible.
The Dandong Ahnmatae Computer Development Co., the primary research lab, hired three
Chinese staff to test the input speed of Chinese Characters in 2007. Research results achieved
the average speed of 250 Chinese Hanzi characters per minute in less than 5 months. Results
were also demonstrated at the China International Software & Information Services Fair. The
Dandong Ahnmatae company was chosen as one of the 100 best Innovative software companies
in China out of 60,000 Chinese software companies.
The current IT generation expects and demands an intelligent and speedy character input system
with multi-lingual capabilities. The Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard Input System, with one
theoretically based keyboard, simultaneous input and with the capability of storing all world
language programs in a single chip within the keyboard is the answer to the demands of this
generation.
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References
Geoffrey Sampson, Writing System, 1985, Stanford University Press
Matthew Ahn, Proposal for Hangul Tong-Il Keyboard, 1985, New Life Magazine (Korean)
Florian Coulmas, The Writing Systems of the World, Blackwell Publisher
Han TaeDong, Phonology of Sejong Era, 1998, Yonsei University Press (Korean)
Ken Lund, CJKV Information Processing, 1st Edit, 1998, 2nd Edit., 2008, O’Reilley Media
The Unicode Consortium, Unicode 5.0, 2006, Addison-Wesley
CISIS, Show Directory, 2007, CISIS Fair Comm. (PRC Gov. Org.) (Chinese)
Matthew Ahn, AhnMaTae Phonetic Hangul Keyboard, 2000, KAIST AI Lab.
Matthew Ahn, Hangul Speedy Input for ECJ, 2000, KAIST AI Lab.
Matthew Ahn, Ahnmatae Phonetic Keyboard for Chinese Hanzi, 2003, (www.ahnmatae.org)
Matthew Ahn, Multi-Input System with Jeung-Eum, 2007, (www.ahnmatae.org)
Matthew Ahn, An-Yin 3.0 for Chinese Minority Language Input System, 2011,
(www.ahnmatae.org)
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