Idu
A page from the 19th-century yu seo pil ji.
Korean name
Hangul 이두 Hanja 吏讀 Revised Romanization Idu McCune-Reischauer Idu

Idu is an archaic writing system which represents the Korean language using hanja. Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language Romanization system in South Korea. McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language Romanization systems along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated Hyangchal (literally vernacular letters or local letters) is an archaic writing system of Korea and was used to transcribe the Korean language Gugyeol is a system for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean. Korean mixed script is a form of writing that uses both Hangul (an alphabetical script and Hanja (Chinese characters Korean romanization is a system for representing the Korean language using the Roman alphabet The Revised Romanization of Korean is the official Korean language Romanization system in South Korea. McCune-Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language Romanization systems along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which The Yale romanizations are four systems created during World War II for use by United States military personnel. A writing system is a type of Symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in Language. This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated The term "idu" is used in two senses. It may refer to various systems of representing Korean phonology through Chinese characters, which were used from the Three Kingdoms to Joseon periods. This article is a technical description of the Phonetics and Phonology of Korean. A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese ( The Three Kingdoms of Korea ( refer to the ancient Korean kingdoms of Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla, which dominated the Korean peninsula In this sense it includes hyangchal and gugyeol writing, as well as the narrower sense of "idu". Hyangchal (literally vernacular letters or local letters) is an archaic writing system of Korea and was used to transcribe the Korean language Gugyeol is a system for rendering texts written in Classical Chinese into understandable Korean. The narrower sense refers solely to the system developed in the Goryeo period, and first referred to by name in the Jewang Ungi. The Goryeo Dynasty ( 918 - 1392) (also spelled Koryŏ was a Sovereign state established in 918 by Taejo Wang Kon. The Jewang Ungi is a historical Poem composed by Yi Seung-hyu (李承休 in 1287 in the late Goryeo period

The idu script used Chinese characters, called hanja, along with special symbols to indicate Korean verb endings and other grammatical markers that were different in Korean from Chinese. A Chinese character, also known as a Han character ( is a Logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi Japanese ( Hanja is the Korean name for Chinese characters. More specifically it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated This made both the meaning and pronunciation difficult to parse, and was one reason why the system was gradually abandoned, to be replaced with hangul, after the 15th century. In this respect, it faced problems analogous to those which confronted early efforts at representing the Japanese language with kanji due to the grammatical differences between these languages and Chinese. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with Hiragana (ひらがな 平仮名 Katakana

Characters were selected for idu based on their Chinese sound, their adapted Korean sound, or their meaning, and some were given a completely new sound and meaning. At the same time, 150 new Korean characters were invented, mainly for names of people and places. This process led to the Koreans borrowing large numbers of Chinese words, and the idu system was quite difficult to learn. Only a small minority of the male aristocracy ever gained literacy.

See also

• Korean language
• Hunmin Jeongeum