Korean language - 한국어

2 - B A S I C V O W E L S

B A S I C  V O W E L S , C O N S O N A N T  & 
S Y L L A B L E S

Hangul is a very logical alphabet making it a pretty easy language to learn. But to understand it, you need to keep in mind Vowels, Consonants and Syllables.

First of all, what are vowels in English? Well they are the sounds represented by: a, e, i, o, u and y. That's 6 letters.

Now, what are consonants in English? Well they are the other 20 letters.

So, what is a syllable in English? Well a syllable in English is a unit of sound that has EXACTLY ONE vowel. In English a syllable can have between 0 to 3 consonants before AND after the vowel. Take a look at these words and try to break them up into syllables:

•bullet
•strong
•banks

The first word is two syllables: bul-let. The last two are each only one syllable. But the 2nd word has 3 consonants before the vowel and the last word has 3 consonants after the vowel.

Korean syllables are very different, you can only have a single consonant before each vowel and there is a maximum of two after the vowel.

H A N G E U L  S Y L L A B L E
B L O C K

Hangul (한글) has 40 letters (19 consonants and 21 vowels). But they are written in Blocks that represent a syllable and which contain between 2 to 4 letters. Here are examples of of Hangul blocks containing 2, 3, and 4 letters each.

2 3 4
으 선 갊

There is a rule that the first letter in each block must be a consonant. For this lesson we will be focusing on simple blocks that contain only two letters: the Placeholder Consonant and a single vowel.

As you will see blocks can be written from top to bottom, left to right or a mixture. But don't worry, after just a little practice the order will become obvious to you.

P L A C E H O L D E R C O N S O N A N T

A Hangul syllable block MUST begin with a consonant. So how do you write a block that starts with a vowel? There is a special silent placeholder letter that you can just ignore if it is the first letter:

Placeholder
ㅇ

This same letter actually has a real sound if it is not the first letter in a block. But don't worry about that yet.

As you'll learn in the next section, all vowels have either a long vertical or horizontal line. If the line is horizontal then you draw the placeholder above the vowel. If the line is vertical the the placeholder is written to the left of the vowel:

Horizontal    Vertical
으 이

H O R I Z O N T A L  V O W E L S

ㅡ = "eu" as the 'u' in |pull|.
ㅗ= "o" as the 'o' in |poke|.
ㅜ= "u" as the 'oo' in |boot|.

V E R T I C A L V O W E L S

ㅣ= "i" as the 'ee' in |meet|.
ㅏ= "a" as the 'a' in |father|.
ㅓ= "eo" as the 'o' in |son|.