Hangul syllable gyeo

As a noun, 겨 can mean grain chaff. It is also a Hangul syllable, written gyeo in standard Korean romanization and pronounced roughly “gyuh” in English, with a brief y glide. Inside a longer word, it is one syllable, so read the whole word for its meaning.

In 겨우, the whole word means “barely” or “only”; those glosses belong to 겨우, not to 겨 by itself.

Hangul was designed to write Korean; its design was completed in 1443, and the guide that introduced it, Hunminjeongeum, was published in 1446. The vowel ㅕ belonged to the original system; records from the later fifteenth century show its written shape changing to the modern form.

How do I type 겨?

On South Korea’s standard two-set keyboard layout, press r then u. The layout maps r to ㄱ and u to ㅕ; Korean input joins them into 겨. Switch your keyboard to Korean first; another layout may use different keys.

If a field displays ㄱㅕ, the input method has left the consonant and vowel separate. Unicode can represent 겨 as one precomposed block or as its decomposed jamo sequence; normalization can reconcile those forms. The visible pair ㄱㅕ is a different sequence.