Hangul Syllable Nabs

낪 spells one Korean syllable, not a whole word.

Split it into ᄂ + ᅡ + ᆹ: initial n, the vowel a, and the final cluster ㅄ. These parts are jamo—Hangul’s consonant and vowel letters, which join into syllable blocks.

The ending ㅄ is a 겹받침: a two-consonant batchim, or syllable ending. At a word end or before another consonant, it is pronounced as a p-like ㅂ; before a following vowel, ㅅ can start the next syllable. The full Korean word tells you which sound to expect.

Why is 낪 written as a block?

It follows Hangul’s regular syllable-building rules.

Hangul was created under King Sejong in 15th-century Korea to write Korean with consonant and vowel letters arranged into syllables. The first record of Hunminjeongeum, the script’s original name, appears in the Sejong Sillok, a royal chronicle, in 1443; an explanatory book with that name was published in 1446.

낪 is one regular combination in that system: its consonant and vowel parts take the initial, middle, and final roles.

How do I type 낪?

Enter ㄴ, ㅏ, ㅂ, then ㅅ in a Korean 2-set input method.

The input method joins ㅂ and ㅅ into the final cluster ㅄ. Unicode also represents the syllable as the separate jamo sequence ᄂ + ᅡ + ᆹ, as well as the single precomposed block 낪.