Hangul syllable cheot

It marks the first person, thing, or event. In Korean, 첫 comes before a noun, as in 첫날 (“first day”), 첫사랑 (“first love”), and 첫 월급 (“first paycheck”). 처음 is a noun meaning “the first time” or “beginning”; it does not modify a noun in the same way.

Hangul was created in 1443, and its explanatory guide was published in 1446. The script gave people a way to write Korean without first learning Chinese characters.

The block is built from ㅊ, ㅓ, and ㅅ: an opening consonant, a vowel, and a final consonant. Unicode allows the syllable as one block or as separate jamo, the letters that make Hangul syllables. If software does not standardize equivalent text before searching or comparing, those forms may not match.