Hangul used to have more glyphs for more sounds. For example, ㅍ sounds like "p", but there was ᇴ which has a dot under ㅍ which is supposed to sound like "f". The same happens to ㅂ. Adding a dot under ㅂ makes the sound to be like "v". The sound of Korean language has become simpler, so several Hangul glyphs were deprecated. However, when Hangul was first made, the purpose of it as stated by King Sejong was to be able to denote the sounds of all languages as well as those of nature.
I myself see in Hangul the potential of a universal writing system. There are a few group of people around the world who don't have a writing system of their own and adopted Hangul to write their language. For this to happen, additional glyphs will be needed to accommodate the sounds of other languages. For example, a click sound in an African language.
Also, there were more ways to combine initial consonants as well as combine last consonants in the past, to write more sounds.
Currently, Unicode has a bit more than 11,000 Hangul characters. It is Ok for normal current Korean language. However, as more combination of consonants and vowels are needed to be written and as more glyphs for other languages' sounds are added (not haphazardly but systematically), the number of characters made with Hangul simple glyphs will exceed what Unicode can contain.
Hence, the need for non-combinatorial data structure for Hangul. There are other benefits such as sorting, etc., but this is the biggest reason for me currently.
Systematic Construction of Hangul Consonants
The shape of Hangul consonants were systematically made.
ㄴ is soft. Add a horizontal line at the top, it becomes ㄷ which uses the same tongue position but sounds harder. To ㄷ, add another horizontal line to make ㅌ which is aspirated ㄷ, or repeat it to make ㄸ which is tense ㄷ. In summary,
ㄴ (soft)
-> top horizontal line -> ㄷ (harder)
-> another horiz. line -> ㅌ (aspirated)
-> repeat -> ㄸ (tense)
ㅅ ㅈ ㅊ ㅉ has the same principle.
ㆁ ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ also has the same principle. ㆁ was in the original Hangul (Hun-min-jeong-um). Its sound is the similar to "ng" in so"ng". The location where airway is blocked is almost the same as in ㄱ. It is a verical line and a circle. If we remove the top horizontal line from ㄱ, we are left with ㅣ. Since this is the same shape as the vowel ㅣ, I believe that a circle was added at the bottom to denote that it is a consonant.
ㅇ ㆆ ㅎ ㆆㆆ would be the sample principle, but in modern Hangul there are only ㅇ and ㅎ. In the original Hangul, instead of ㆆㆆ, there is ㆅ which I guess is the tense version of ㅎ.
ㅁ ㅂ ㅍ ㅃ - in this sequence, ㅁ to ㅂ is not by adding a horizontal line at the top. ㅂ to ㅍ is not by adding another horizontal line. Using the same principle, I would reconstruct this sequence as:
════
╔══╗ ╔══╗ ╔══╗╔══╗
║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║║ ║
╚══╝ ╚══╝ ╚══╝ ╚══╝╚══╝
A note about the second horizontal line to make aspirated sounds: In ㅊ and ㅎ, this can be written as a short vertical line on top of the top horizontal line.
Interestingly, in the original Hangul, consonants were ordered as
ㄱ ㄲ ㅋ ㆁ ㄷ ㄸ ㅌ ㄴ ㅥ ㅂ ㅃ ㅍ ㅁ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅅ ㅆ ㆆ ㅎ ㆅ ㅇ ㄹ ㅿ
which is
ㄱ ㄲ ㅋ ㆁ
ㄷ ㄸ ㅌ ㄴ ㅥ (note ㅥ which is tense ㄴ)
ㅂ ㅃ ㅍ ㅁ
ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅅ ㅆ
ㆆ ㅎ ㆅ ㅇ
ㄹ ㅿ (exception group)
More or less, the order of harder - tense - aspirated - soft is used for each consonant group. To me, this is more logical than the current Hangul consonant order ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ.
I am trying to modify Hangul glyphs to make sense in the most systematic construction while keeping readability.
Syllabic Boundaries
English alphabet shows phonemes (s, y, l, a, b, i, c), but not syllable boundaries (syl, la, bic). Combination Hangul (실라빅) shows both phonemes and syllable boundaries, which helps readability and makes it easy to learn how to pronounce Hangul. Linear Hangul had the drawback of losing clear syllable boundaries (ㅅㅣㄹㄹㅏㅂㅣㄱ). One important aspect of my linear Hangul research is ways to reintroduce syllable boundaries in linear Hangul.
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