Does the Korean language have capital letters?

I obviously can’t read Korean, but it always seems to be uniform letters when I see anything written. Or do they just write a capital letter in a different way rather than a different size?

I know I could Google this, but it feels more fun to ask here :slight_smile: Thanks!!

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No it hasn’t.
In a “technical” sense it would be also strange, since two and more letters are packed into a small box as one syllable.

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Interesting. But do they still use punctuation? Or full stops at least? I have been trying to learn the basics of Korean, but sadly a head injury I had means I sometimes have memory problems and I just can’t get it to store inside my brain :frowning:

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No capitals. But they do use periods (full stops) to end sentences. But when we get scripts of dramas, it’s rare to see a period at the end of a declaratory sentence, but usually, if you know Korean you don’t need any period to signify the end of the sentence because of some somewhat rigid rules that the predicate almost always ends the sentence (either a dynamic predicate such as a verb or a static predicate which in English would be an adjective) and has a sentence ending particle at the end of the predicate word.

You’ve probably heard “yo” or “nida” at the end of sentences in Korean right? There are several other sentence ending particles which are added to the predicate at the end of the sentence so, one “knows” it is the end of the sentence.
Similarly, there are particles which denote sentence phrases so you don’t need commas.
What you usually see in written Hangul are syllable blocks. Syllables always start with a consonant (one is silent!) followed by a vowel. A syllable may have one or two consonants at the end, so each syllable is written in a block with the beginning consonant either above or to the left of the vowel, depending on the vowel’s shape. If there are one or two consonants following the vowel, depending on the vowel’s shape, the ending consonants are written under the vowel or to the right of the vowel. When you type on a computer keyboard, the computer “knows” to wait for the next character to determine how to assemble each syllable you type. For example if you typed N U N and then a space, the computer knows to type a block 눈. But if you type the word for older sister, nuna, the computer knows it should be 누나. See how the second ㄴ was moved? That’s because the computer knows if I typed a second vowel, the second ㄴ must be the beginning of another syllable, because of the inflexible rule that a vowel never begins a syllable.

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That’s really interesting. Thank you so much, I do keep watching videos on Youtube, trying to learn the language,

I did find a tutor here where I live in Manchester, U.K, but she recommended lessons possibly twice weekly and I just can’t afford that at the moment, But face-to-face is how I’ll probably make progress. I’m just sad it took a pandemic for me to discover my love for all things Korean :slight_smile:

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Let’s flip this over and think that the pandemic, bad as it was, had at least this good consequence, that you discovered something you love.
(For me, who almost died of covid last winter, it taught me to always see the positive side)

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