Hangul syllable Na

나 is the plain Korean first-person pronoun, “I” or “me.” Use it for yourself in a familiar relationship, often with a friend. For humble self-reference to someone you should defer to, Korean uses 저. Age alone does not make a relationship familiar.

A message containing only 나 usually points to the sender: “I” or “me.” In a longer message, look at what surrounds it: 나 can mark alternatives or appear in a question ending instead of naming the speaker.

Why was Hangul created?

Hangul was designed to write Korean speech with an alphabet. Before it, Korean was often written with Chinese characters, or hanja, which did not represent Korean speech directly. The new letters were meant to make writing Korean easier to learn and use.

The name 훈민정음, meaning “proper sounds for instructing the people,” is recorded in 1443; an explanatory book about it was published in 1446. The book describes how letters combine into syllable blocks. A Korean-language rendering of its opening includes 나랏말, “the language of our country”; there, 나 begins a word rather than serving as the pronoun.

The pronouns have their own history: a historical study places the emergence of humble 저 in the late 19th century. It became an alternative to plain 나 for deferential self-reference.

Why is 나 written as one block?

Hangul groups letters into a block for each syllable. In 나, ㄴ is the initial consonant letter and ㅏ is the vowel; together they form one syllable. Fonts can change the block’s proportions without changing its reading. Writing ㄴ ㅏ separately shows its component letters, not a different translation.