CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.net-core
HME-Nick
HME-Nick

Reputation: 51

How can I check wether a specific Hangeul character is part of the syllable?

I am currently working on a little dictionary app for Korean in C# (which I am trying to learn). I would like to add a feature where a conjugation chart is given with all basic verb forms for a certain verb. To ensure the verbs are conjugated correctly I have to check wether a verb is irregular. To do this I have to check wether a verb stem ends with a certain character or not.

The problem is, however, that a computer sees an entire syllable of a Korean word as a character, not the individual 2 or 3 letters that form that specific syllable, but I need to compare the final letter of a syllable to do it correctly.

For example the Korean verb 춥다 is an irregular verb and we can tell because the verb stem 춥 has ㅂ as the final letter. Yet 춥 is the char, not ㅂ in the case of the verb stem. So this does not work:

verbStem = "춥";
verbStem.EndsWith("ㅂ");

I am currently a bit puzzled on how to make this work and thus I would be quite happy if I could get some directions.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 145

Answers (1)

HME-Nick
HME-Nick

Reputation: 51

Using the popular Korean Q&A service 지식IN (link to orginal answer) I was able to find the answer to my question. I am so grateful to.

The first step is to seperate the individual letters by normalizing the string. This is done using Normalize method:

string a = "안녕";
string b = a.Normalize( System.Text.NormalizationForm.FormKD);

When using the Normalize method with the Korean string it will be split into its individual component unicode characters.

However, the extremely helpful answer at 지식IN did not stop there with helping me with directions. It pointed out I needed to be aware that even when it has been split there is a different unicode for characters depending whether it is in the initial possition or not and thus I will have to use the appropriate unicode for it. ('ᄋ' is different from 'ᆼ') The unicodes for these are found at Hangul Jamo (Unicode block).

I am so glad someone managed to answer this question for me, but I felt I ought to write out the answer at Stackoverflow as well since you might never know someone else might want to learn how to do something similar.

Upvotes: 1

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