TheHunmin Jeongeum Haerye, the treatise introducing the principles behind the Korean alphabet attributed toKing Sejong in 1446, explains that this glyph was derived from the outline of the mouth because/m/ is a "labial sound" (唇音). Note that it is nearly identical in shape to口(kǒu), the Chinese logogram for "mouth". According to Sejong, the lettersㅂ (b, “b”) andㅍ (p, “p”) were created by adding strokes toㅁ, because all three arebilabial sounds.
Gari Ledyard proposes that Sejong derivedㅁ from the lower part ofㅂ, derived from the'Phags-pa letterꡎ(p). Ledyard gives evidence that Sejong adopted 'Phags-pa for the basic glyph forms, although the final shapes of the letters may indeed have been influenced by those of the speech organs (Ledyard 1997).
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