Hyangchal
# Hyangchal

Chinese characters :

Scripts

Precursors

Oracle-bone

Bronze

Seal (bird-wormlargesmall)

Clerical

Regular

Semi-cursive

Cursive

Flat brush

Simplified characters

Type styles

Imitation Song

Ming

Sans-serif :

Properties

Strokes (order)

Radicals

Classification :

Variants

Character-form standards

Kangxi Dictionary

Jiu zixing/Inherited form

Xin zixing

General Standard Chinese Characters (PRC)

Graphemes of commonly-used Chinese characters (Hong Kong)

Standard typefaces for Chinese characters (ROC Taiwan)

Grapheme-usage standards

Graphemic variants

General Standard Characters (PRC)

Jōyō kanji (Japan)

Other standards

Standardized Forms of Words with Variant Forms (PRC)

Previous standards

Commonly-used Characters (PRC)

Tōyō kanji (Japan) :

Reforms

Chinese

Clerical reforms

Traditional characters

Simplified characters (first roundsecond round)

Debate

Japanese

Old (Kyūjitai)

New (Shinjitai)

Ryakuji

Sino-Japanese

Differences between Shinjitai and Simplified characters

Korean

Yakja

Singaporean

Table of Simplified Characters :

Homographs

Literary and colloquial readings :

Use in particular scripts

Written Chinese

Zetian characters

Slavonic transcription

Hokkien

Nüshu

Kanji (Kokuji)

Kana (Man'yōgana)

Idu

Hanja (Gukja)

Chữ Nôm

Sawndip :

vte :

Hyangchal (Korean: 향찰, literally "vernacular letters", "local letters", or "corresponded sound") is an archaic writing system of Korea and was used to transcribe the Korean language in Chinese characters. Using the hyangchal system, Chinese characters were given a Korean reading based on the syllable associated with the character. The hyangchal writing system is often classified as a subgroup of the Idu script.

The first mention of hyangchal is the monk Kyun Ye's biography during the Goryeo period. Hyangchal is best known as the method Koreans used to write hyangga poetry. Twenty-five such poems still exist and show that vernacular poetry used native Korean words and Korean word order, and each syllable was "transcribed with a single graph". The writing system covered nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, particles, suffixes, and auxiliary verbs. The practice of hyangchal continued during the Goryeo era, where it was used to record native Korean poetry as well.

