What ㅘ means
It marks the wa vowel inside a Korean syllable. In Hangul, a jamo is a letter component; ㅘ combines the vowel letters ㅗ and ㅏ to fill a syllable’s vowel position.
By itself, ㅘ is an isolated jamo fragment, as you might see in a spelling explanation or while entering Korean. Its role comes from the syllable it helps build.
The first record of the Hangul system, Hunminjeongeum, dates to 1443; its explanatory book followed in 1446. The system was designed to make Korean easier to write, including for people who found Chinese characters difficult to use for Korean speech.
How do I type ㅘ?
Enter ㅗ followed by ㅏ; the Korean IME combines them. An IME is the input method that turns keystrokes into Korean syllables.
Why does ㅘ sometimes show as ᅪ?
They represent the same vowel in different Unicode roles. ㅘ is the form suited to standing alone; ᅪ is a conjoining jamo used in sequences that an input method or font can assemble into syllable blocks.
In 15th-century Korean, the combination was read as /oa/, an o sound followed by an a sound; later sound change led to modern /wa/. The related vowel ㅝ follows a parallel pattern, combining ㅜ and ㅓ.
Neutral Korean spelling: ㅘ supplies the vowel in a syllable.
By itself, ㅘ is a spelling fragment; read it with its surrounding syllable or word.
Who writes ㅘ
Loading…
Don't confuse it with
1
Alphabet
Questions people ask
1Why does ㅘ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
5
Collections with ㅘ
4
How to type or find ㅘ
- Also called
- wa vowel · Korean wa · compound vowel wa
- Search it as
- ㅘ · Korean jamo · Hangul vowel · ㅘ typing · Dubeolsik
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ㅘ\3158Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.