Hangul Syllable Pyah

It is one Korean syllable block built from three letters.

The letters that combine into Korean syllables are called jamo: ㅍ starts this block, ㅑ is its vowel, and ㅎ closes it. The surrounding Korean text helps show whether the block belongs to a word.

Why does Hangul use square syllables?

The block keeps the parts of each spoken syllable together. Hangul represents Korean speech with blocks built from an opening consonant, a vowel, and sometimes a final consonant. The component letters are called jamo.

The first recorded mention of Hangul is in a 1443 entry of the Sejong Sillok, a royal chronicle; the explanatory book Hunminjeongeum was published in 1446. Hangul was designed to represent Korean speech in a society that had long used Chinese writing.

During the Joseon era, Hangul spread through Buddhist translations, songs, teaching, and letters, reaching people beyond the classical-Chinese literary elite. Spelling conventions changed over the following centuries, while the syllable-block principle remained.

Unicode, the system that assigns codes to characters, can represent 퍟 as one precomposed syllable or as a sequence of conjoining jamo that a font shapes together. Fonts can give the parts different spacing and proportions.