ᆢ

From ㆍ plus an additional dot to indicate initial iotization. Repurposed for Jeju from an eighteenth-century digraph intended to transcribe mainland dialects; see more in the Korean entry.

• IPA^(key): /jɔ/ (fluent speakers, born before c. 1960)
  • IPA^(key): [jo~jə] (non-fluent heritage speakers who have merged /ɔ/ with other vowels)

ᆢ (yaw)

1. The Jeju letter, ᄋᆢ (yaw)

Doubled form of ㆍ (Yale: o) to indicate initial iotization.

When inventing Hangul, Sejong had originally recommended the digraph ᆝ, consisting of ㅣ (i) and ㆍ, to write the /jʌ/ diphthong. But this digraph did not enter the orthodox Hangul orthography, as the diphthong in question no longer existed in the prestige Seoul Korean dialect due to having merged with /jə/, and it was soon forgotten. The new digraph ᆢ was invented by the scholar Sin Gyeong-jun (신경준/申景濬) in his 1750 work Hunmin jeongeum unhae (훈민정음운해/訓民正音韻解) to transcribe some dialects which had still retained the diphthong. Sin does not identify what dialects these were, although it is believed that /jʌ/ was still found in the major dialect zones of Gyeongsang and Pyongan (both of which Sin was familar with) in the mid-eighteenth century. However, /jʌ/ would merge with /ja/ in both areas in the late eighteenth century, again removing the need for this digraph.

In the late twentieth century, repurposed to transcribe the hitherto unwritten speech of Jeju, on which see above.

• IPA^(key): [jʌ]

ᆢ • (yo)

1. (obsolete) a digraph representing the diphthong [jʌ~jɔ], now merged with [ja] or [jə~jʌ] in all mainland dialects but still distinguished by old Jeju speakers