One of the basic principles of Hangul is the process of combining separate letter glyphs into syllabic blocks. You will never see one glyph on its own, they are always combined into one syllable. For example, the word "sitelen" would be three syllabic blocks, si - te - len, rather than seven separate letters or glyphs. It would look something like this:
The interesting thing is that all blocks are the same size, no matter how many glyphs they contain. As you can see above, the symbols get a bit squished when combined with others to keep the standard size. The important thing to remember is, like in English, the letters go from left to right and top to bottom inside their blocks. The rules for combining letters are as follows:
If the syllable's vowel is a vertical one, then the consonant will go to the left of it.
If the syllable's vowel is a horizontal one, then the consonant will go above it.
If the syllable ends in the letter "n", the vowel and consonant are squished into the top part of the block and the "n" glyph is placed at the bottom (See the third block in "sitelen" above).
As you can see, combining glyphs into blocks is a very logical process. There is one more thing you need to learn, however. It is the concept of the "placeholder". When a syllable begins (or even is only) a vowel, then it would look weird and out of place to have that lone vowel sitting there. In the place of a consonant, we put the "placeholder" glyph to do just that: hold the place of a consonant that isn't there. It helps to unify your writing and help from singling out any one block for looking incomplete.
And here it is:
Note: Remember that glyphs like "wa" and "jo" are considered vowels in Korean so you must use the placeholder with these as well!
There you go! You've learned almost everything you need to know about writing Toki Pona with Korean Hangul. There's just a few more points to cover and you'll be ready to start writing. To see all of these glyphs in use, take a look at the Samples section.
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