Okay. Have you read my disclaimer in the description? So, as I've said, I'll just be studying with you so I'll try my best with this so we can learn together.
Anyway, let's start!
The Korean alphabet is called 한글 (Hangeul)
There are 24 basic letters and digraphs.
First, let's learn the Basic Consonants (자음).
ㄱ - g/k
ㄴ - n
ㄷ - d/t
ㄹ - r/l
ㅁ - m
ㅂ - b/p
ㅅ - s
ㅇ - ng
ㅈ - j
ㅊ - ch
ㅋ - k
ㅌ - t
ㅍ - p
ㅎ - h
Five of these consonants are doubled to form the five tense consonants (쌍자음).
ㄲ - kk
ㄸ - tt
ㅃ - pp
ㅆ - ss
ㅉ - jj
Now, let's move on to the vowels (모음). There are 10 basic letters but 11 additional letters can be created by combining certain basic letters, making that a total of 21 vowel letters.
ㅏ - a
ㅓ - eo
ㅗ - o
ㅜ - u
ㅡ - eu
ㅣ - i
ㅐ - ae
ㅔ - e
ㅑ - ya
ㅕ - yeo
ㅛ - yo
ㅠ - yu
ㅒ - yae
ㅖ - ye
ㅘ - wa
ㅝ - wo
ㅙ - wae
ㅞ - we
ㅚ - oe
ㅟ - wi
You good? Its okay, you'll get the hang of it soon enough.
We'll now move on to the next step in reading 한글: Syllable Blocks.
In each syllable block, there is a:
1. Beginning consonant*
2. Middle vowel*
3. Optional final consonant
*A block MUST have the first two.
Example:
친구 - friend
친 here is one block, 구 is another block together they form a word that means friend.
ㅊ + ㅣ + ㄴ = ch + i + n
ㄱ + ㅜ = g + u
친구 = chingu
As I've said before a syllable block MUST have a consonant in the beginning.
So, what if its just 'a'?
We use the consonant ㅇ to fix that.
ㅇ is used as a silent consonant when it is found in the beginning. It will only have that 'ng' sound when it is used as the final consonant.
아, 오, 우, 이, 워
That concludes this lesson. If you have any questions, just comment them.
By the way, there will be times that I won't be romanizing the words for the next lessons so make sure you study 한글.
YOU ARE READING
Learn Korean with Me
Non-FictionDisclaimer: I am not Korean but just learning how. I'll just share here what I know. Feel free to ask in the questions, I'll try my best to answer them.
