Hangul Letter Sios-Pieup

It marks an old two-consonant beginning. ㅽ puts ㅅ before ㅂ at the start of a syllable. The 15th-century Hangul record tradition includes forms such as ᄲᅧ, “bone,” and ᄲᅳᆯ, “horn.”

This spelling let writers record a consonant cluster that modern Korean no longer writes this way. Hangul was developed in 1443, and an explanatory manuscript appeared in 1446, describing the writing system and its principles.

Its sound is period-sensitive. A 2023 study describes early ㅅ-clusters as possible consonant sequences, while later evidence supports a tense-consonant reading. The word and its historical date matter when interpreting the sound.

is ㅽ the same as ᄲ?

They represent the same historical compound in different Unicode forms. ㅽ is a compatibility jamo; ᄲ is the corresponding initial consonant used when composing Hangul syllables. A font or text system may display one form but not the other.

The same historical compound-writing system also used forms such as ㅺ and ㅼ. It was later abandoned; by 1933, modern orthography had standardized doubled tense consonants such as ㅃ and ㅆ.

If ㅽ appears as a square, the font may lack archaic-Hangul coverage. A font that supports old Hangul, such as Noto Sans CJK KR, can display it.