I've seen a number of Hangul syllables that contain 4 characters (닭, for example) - is it possible to have syllables with 5 (or even more) characters in them? The Wikipedia page on Hangul suggests it's possible, but doesn't give an example - and I can't find other resources to say for sure either way.
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1Interesting question... are you looking for examples from real words in particular? (I can certainly type '봙' in my IME...)– Нет войнеCommented Oct 16, 2016 at 20:55
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4Well, there's 뷁, which is an internet slang meaning WTF (it came from some singer's rather over-enthusiastic pronunciation of the English word "break"). But I can't think of a legitimate(?) Korean word with 5 jamo's.– jickCommented Oct 16, 2016 at 22:33
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@topo-morto yeah, ideally looking for a real-world answer (just because an IME will let you doesn't necessarily mean it's possible in the language). Thanks for the slang answer, @jick!– Derek RedfernCommented Oct 17, 2016 at 15:22
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@jick I'd suggest adding 뷁 as an answer - seems pretty well known?– Нет войнеCommented Oct 17, 2016 at 15:27
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Well, I'm not sure if it would qualify as a real word. :)– jickCommented Oct 17, 2016 at 20:23
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2 Answers
Old Hangul (옛한글) apparently allowed up to 9 jamo in a single block. I am not sure if this was "proper" use or abuse of Hangul at the time... I managed to find a reference to one of these "in the wild:" ꥸᅦퟗ which cites this document from 1922.
Unicode supports Old Hangul, if just to study and document old Korean texts. (Interestingly, the character ꥸᅦퟗ is rendered as a single character in HTML, but appears as three separate characters in the text box while editing.)
Some special IME's support Old Hangul input. Here is an explanation of how 9 jamo can be combined into a single block:
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6Note that "ㅉㅎㅔㄹㄹㅋ" in the cited document from 1922 is given explicitly as an example of a nonsensical syllable where the author says that the natural rules of consonants and vowels are seriously violated.– IgnatiusCommented Jul 29, 2019 at 3:57
This table ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul_Syllables ) seems to contain some syllable blocks with 5 jamos.
괁 괂
굀 굁 굂 굃
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jamo
After some searching, I'd tentatively say that 5 is the max. -- that 6 jamos or 6 jamo syllable blocks don't exist.
