First things first, it's going to be crucial to be able to read Korean when using this guide because the romanization of Korean looks sort of extremely disgusting to me, so I'll be writing words and sentences in Korean. But now I've thought it over a bit and reading Korean characters right off the start is hard for most people, so I'll be writing the romanization below the Korean.
The Korean alphabet is called Hangul (한글) and it's used throughout both countries of Korea (in North Korea it's called Choseongul 조선글 but we're learning Seoul dialect here and not North).
Hangul consists of 14 consonants and 10 vowels:
Consonants:
ㄱ, ㄴ,ㄷ,ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㅈ, ㅊ,ㅋ,ㅌ,ㅍ,ㅎ
k/g, n, d/t, r/l, m, b/p, s, -/ng, j/ch, ch, k, t, p, h
**the circle character only makes a sound when at the end of a group of characters**
Vowels:
ㅏ, ㅑ, ㅓ, ㅕ, ㅗ, ㅛ, ㅜ, ㅠ, ㅡ,ㅣ
ah, ya, eo, yeo, oh, yo, oo, you, eu, ii
(please note that I'm romanizing them as to how I personally think they sound and not by any recognized scheme or system)
It's actually somewhat hard for me to teach foreigners how to speak or pronounce Korean since it's so foreign to them, just like how certain sounds in English are foreign to me.
Consonants I think foreigners have the most trouble with are ㄱ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅂ, ㅇ, ㅈ, ㅊ (k/g, d/t, r/l, b/p, -/ng, j/ch, ch).
Vowels I think foreigners have the most trouble with are ㅓ, ㅕ, ㅡ (eo, yeo, eu).
The next pages will deal with specifics on how to pronounce all the characters.
YOU ARE READING
Korean Basics
RandomSomeone on tumblr asked me to make a guide for Korean like I did Japanese. This one will probably do worse, you all have my apologies beforehand.
