Open r12a opened 7 years ago
The dots written below consonants represent the obsolete vowel arae-a. Wikipedia says:
ㆍ ə (arae-a 아래아 "lower a"): Presumably pronounced [ʌ], similar to modern ㅓ (eo). It is written as a dot, positioned beneath the consonant. The arae-a is not entirely obsolete, as it can be found in various brand names, and in the Jeju language, where it is pronounced [ɒ]. The ə formed a medial of its own, or was found in the diphthong ㆎ arae-ae, written with the dot under the consonant and ㅣ (transcribed i) to its right, in the same fashion as ㅚ or ㅢ.
See also https://github.com/w3c/klreq/issues/21#issuecomment-346119056
Contrary to the original description, tone marks are shown here as dots alongside the syllables. These were used in 15. century Korean (see https://github.com/w3c/klreq/issues/21#issuecomment-346119056).
tag: ruby Inter-character ruby in vertical korean text (for hanja). source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hunmin_Jeongeum.svg
The description of this image says "Old Hangul part of Hunmin Jeongeum, in SVG. Shown with horizontal writing and spaces between words. Tone marks were omitted."