Hangul — A hybrid orthography

Abstract Hangul is widely categorized as a classic example of a morphophonemic orthography, in which each morpheme receives a single spelling, even if its pronunciation varies from context to context. This paper makes the case that Hangul is in fact a hybrid orthography that adheres to a morphophonemic strategy for spelling consonants but adopts the conventions of a phonetic writing system for representing vowels. Various explanations for this arrangement are considered.