Hangul Syllable Jals

The whole Korean word supplies a meaning; 잜 alone does not.

Its building letters, called jamo, are ㅈ (the opening consonant), ㅏ (the vowel), and ㄽ (a final two-consonant cluster). The Korean term batchim means the consonant at a syllable’s end. Unicode’s “jals” is an algorithmic label for these components, not a translation.

Before Hangul, Korean writing relied largely on Classical Chinese—the formal written language—or Chinese characters adapted for Korean. Hangul’s creation is recorded in 1443, and its guide, Hunminjeongeum, was completed in 1446; the script was designed to write Korean directly, widen access to writing, and help people learn neighboring languages. An 1894 decree made Korean the basis for laws and orders, and a 1933 spelling draft underlies the modern standard. That is Hangul’s history, not a special history or meaning for 잜.

How do I type 잜?

On a Korean keyboard, enter the jamo in order.

Switch your input method to Korean and enter ㅈ, ㅏ, ㄹ, ㅅ in that order; the input method assembles them into one block, grouping the last two as ㄽ.

If software shows the pieces separately, the text may be in NFD, Unicode’s decomposed form: ᄌ + ᅡ + ᆳ. NFC, the composed form, stores the same syllable as 잜. The representation changes, not the character’s identity.

How does ㄽ affect pronunciation?

At a word edge, only the ㄹ part is pronounced.

At a word’s end or before another consonant, ㄽ reduces to its ㄹ part, which sounds like an l at the end of a Korean syllable. When a Korean word ending that begins with a vowel follows, ㄹ stays in the first syllable and ㅅ moves to the next as the tense ㅆ sound. For example, 곬이 is pronounced with the ending written 골씨.