How to Speak Korean
Korean (한국어, Hangugeo) is the official language of South Korea, North Korea, and China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, and is the dominant community language of the Korean diaspora, spanning Uzbekistan to Japan to Canada. It is a fascinating and complex language of debated origins yet rich in history, culture, and beauty. Whether you're planning a vacation to the Korean World, trying to reconnect with your heritage, or just enjoy learning new languages, follow these simple steps to speaking Korean and you'll soon be on your way to fluency!
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StepsTips and WarningsVideo
Getting Started
1
Learn Hangeul, the Korean alphabet. The alphabet is a good place to start when you're learning to speak Korean, especially if you hope to progress to reading and writing later on. Korean has a fairly simple alphabet, although it may seem strange to most English speakers at first because it is completely different than the Roman alphabet.
Speak Korean Step 1.jpg
Hangeul was created during the Joseon Dynasty in 1443. Hangeul has 24 letters, consisting of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. However, if you include 16 diphthongs and double consonants, there are 40 letters in total.[1]
Korean also uses around 3,000 Chinese characters, or Hanja, to represent words of Chinese origin. Unlike Japanese Kanji, Korean Hanja are used in more limited contexts like academic writing, religious (Buddhist) texts, dictionaries, newspaper headlines, classical and pre-WWII Korean literature, and family names. In North Korea, the use of Hanja is almost non-existent.[2]
2
Learn to count. Knowing how to count is an essential skill in any language. Counting in Korean can be tricky, as Koreans use two different sets of cardinal numbers, depending on the situation: Korean and Sino-Korean, which originated from Chinese and has some of its characters.[3]
Speak Korean Step 2.jpg
Use the Korean form for numbers of items (between 1 and 99) and age, e.g. 2 children, 5 bottles of beer, 27 years old. Here's how to count to ten in the Korean form:
One = 하나 pronounced "hana"
Two = 둘 pronounced "dool"
Three = 셋 pronounced "se(t)"(" t" is not pronounced)
Four = 넷 pronounced "ne(t)"
Five = 다섯 pronounced "da-seo(t)"
Six = 여섯 pronounced "yeoh-seo(t)"
Seven = 일곱 pronounced "il-gop"
Eight = 여덟 pronounced "yeoh-deohlb"
Nine = 아홉 pronounced "ahop"
Ten = 열 pronounced "yeohl"
Use the Sino-Korean form for dates, money, addresses, phone numbers, and numbers above 100. Here's how to count to ten in Sino-Korean:
One = 일 pronounced "il"
Two = 이 pronounced "ee"
Three = 삼 pronounced "sam"
Four = 사 pronounced "sa"
Five = 오 pronouched "oh"
Six = 육 pronounced "yuk"
Seven = 칠 pronounced "chil"
Eight = 팔 pronounced "pal"
Nine = 구 pronounced "goo" ( Mostly It is "koo")
