Hangul Syllable Rij

It marks one Korean syllable; the word supplies its meaning.

맂 combines ㄹ as its initial consonant, ㅣ as its vowel, and ㅈ as its final consonant. The romanized label “rij” identifies the written sequence; it is not a translation of a Korean word.

How do I type 맂?

Select Korean input and enter ㄹ, ㅣ, then ㅈ.

With a Korean IME active, type the letters in order; it places them in initial-consonant, vowel, and final-consonant positions. These component letters are called jamo.

Unicode can store the same syllable as one precomposed character or as a sequence of jamo. NFC normalization joins the sequence into one block; the underlying forms can behave differently in cursor movement and search.

The final-consonant position is called batchim. At a syllable end, ㅈ sounds like an unreleased “t”; before a following vowel, it carries into the next syllable as its initial consonant.

Where did Hangul come from?

Hangul was designed as a writing system for Korean.

Hangul's earliest documented creation dates to 1443; Hunminjeongeum, a book explaining its purpose and design, appeared in 1446. Before Hangul, Korean was written mainly with Chinese characters. Systems such as Idu, Gugyeol, and Hyangchal adapted those characters to represent Korean words and grammar, but were difficult for broad literacy.

Hangul's use expanded through Buddhist and Confucian translations, practical books, letters, petitions, literature, and everyday records, even while Chinese writing remained dominant in official documents. In 1894, Hangul became the official national writing system. 맂 is a regular block in this syllable system, not a separate pictogram.