Michael Everson wrote:

> Well, as I've said before, I consider Hangul to be an alphabet. The
> fact that the letters are typographically clustered and that the
> repertoire of clusters is exhaustive of the possible syllables in the
> language doesn't make it a syllabary. The units can all stand alone
> and are even input individually. It's an alphabet.

Seems to me that there are some functional differences too. Although,
probably, these functional differences were caused by the graphic stacking,
anyway they cannot be ignored altogether.

Unlikely in alphabets, Hangul syllables have a rigid "syntax" that has to be
followed. A syllable must be composed exactly of one starting consonant
letter (possibly composed of several simpler letters), one vowel letter, and
an optional final consonant letter (possibly composed).

There cannot be a syllable-initial vowel -- in fact the letter "ng" has been
used as an initial unread consonant to write syllables which photetically
start by a consonant.

Similarly, there cannot be a syllable without vowel letters, as it would be
possible in alphabets (cmp. Serbo-Croatian "Trst", or Western acronyms).

These limitations account for something slightly different from an alphabet.

_ Marco