Basics - Lesson 1 - Hangul Alphabet System Lesson

Welcome to your first lesson in learning the Korean language, below are the essential vowels and consonants that you will be confronted with in everyday Korean. Take your time to learn and memorise these as you will need these going forward for the upcoming lessons.

The Korean script / alphabet is one of the most special languages in the world, it consists of one essentially special feature that would set it apart from most languages. 

In English we generally write from left to right hand side and generate worlds in that order, however in Korean, you would generate worlds in syllable blocks. 

A quick example of this would be the word thankyou in Korean komapsumnida which in English would comprise of k-o-m-a-p-s-u-m-n-i-d-a whereas a Korean syllable block would generate ko-map-sum-ni-da. Lets begin to look at the basic Korean vowels and consonants of the Korean alphabet.

Korean Vowels : -

ㅏ 'a'

ㅑ 'ya'

ㅓ 'eo'

ㅕ 'yeo'

ㅗ 'o'

ㅛ 'yo'

ㅜ 'oo' or 'u'

ㅠ 'yoo' or 'yu'

ㅡ 'eu'

ㅣ 'ee'

Korean Consonants : -

ㄱ 'g' or 'k'

ㄴ 'n'

ㄷ 'd' or 't'

ㄹ 'r' or 'l'

ㅁ 'm'

ㅂ 'b' or 'p'

ㅅ 's'

ㅇ -

ㅈ 'ch'

ㅊ 'chh'

ㅋ 'g' or 'k'

ㅌ 'dd'

ㅍ 'pp'

ㅎ 'h'

Note that ' ' ' means the letter is aspirated, i.e a sharp sound.

Here is an example of how you can compose a word in korean.

ㅎ +ㅏ + ㄴ = 한 (han)

ㄱ + ㅜ + ㄱ = 국 (guk)

한국 pronounced HanGuk meaning Korea

In Korean every syllable block will consist of a consonant letter first, it can however begin with a vowel in which case we would add a null syllable that looks like 'o'. This would then have a consonant letter either to the right or underneath it.
In every Korean syllable, there would also be a consistency of having a vowel and a consonant.
In Korean the two vowel symbols ㅏ and ㅗ are called "bright vowels" as they sound sonorous to native Korean speakers. The other vowels derived from them are also called "bright vowels" which are ㅙ, ㅘ, ㅐ. The dark vowels are the opposite and compose of ㅓ, ㅜ. The neutral vowels are ㅣ, ㅡ.

Below as some useful words and phrases for beginners.

ajossi

waiter

hana

one

ojingo

squid

soju

Korean alcohol vodka

issoyo / iss-

there is

maekju

beer

juseyo

give me please

yogi

here

kwail

some fruit

Go to our Korean Exercise page here

Basics - Lesson 2 - Double Vowels 

Basic lesson 2