The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn.

When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

Alphabet

English Equivalent

Extra Points

Examples

An unaspirated k at the beginning of a word, and a g most of the time in the middle of words. Made by almost biting on the tongue at the n ends of words, and by placing the tongue behind the top teeth otherwise. Like, , this consonant is like the unaspirated t in English. It is a d in the middle of words. A mixture between the English r and l. When between vowels, it is like a single rolled Spanish r or like the tt in butter in some American dialects. If there are two of them together, it becomes a solid l. m An unaspirated p at the beginning of words, and a b in the middle of words. mam "heart" pan "half" ! ka-ra "Go!" tal-li "differently" ta "all" na "I" By unaspirated, I mean that its not pronounced very hard, like the English k. ! ka "Go!"

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

Alphabet

English Equivalent

Extra Points

Examples
san

When coming before the "ee" sound, it becomes an sh.

"mountain" shi "poem"

In the bottom of syllables, this character is like the English ng without the g sound. At the beginning of syllables, this character is just a place marker and has no sound. cha Unaspirated ch at the beginning of words, j inside words. ruler cha-ja "Lets sleep" Strongly aspirated ch. cha "car" ka-pe "Caf" tan Strongly aspirated t. nae "burnt smell" Strongly aspirated p. h Almost silent after , , , between pae "medal" hae ing "carp" yng "English"

Strongly aspirated k.

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

Alphabet

English Equivalent

Extra Points
vowels. When it comes before or follows , ,, or , it makes the consonants aspirated: , ,, respectively.

Examples
"sun"

There are also a few double consonants that are "forticized." These consonants must be pronounced with more force than their regular counterparts, but without aspiration (this is somewhat difficult, at least for native English speakers). Here are the possible double consonants: To Save this Page Press (CTRL D) or E-mail this Page! Free Translation Alphabet English Equivalent Extra Points Examples

Forticized k. Forticized t. Forticized p. Forticized s. Forticized ch.

Written kk. Written tt. Written pp. Written ss. Written tch.

kka-ch'i "magpie" ttal "daughter" ppal-li "quickly" ssal "uncooked rice" tchak "companion"

There are 21 possible combinations of vowels and are as follows (shown here with the place marker to make them into real syllables): Alphabet English Equivalent Extra Points Examples

Like the a in father.

a-ga "baby"

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

Alphabet

English Equivalent
Like the British augh in caught. Like the ee in tee. Like the o in oh but more rounded. Like the oo in boot, but more rounded.

Extra Points
This best explained as a rounded low back vowel. It is sometimes pronounced like the u in sun.

Examples

t "more"

pi "blood" o "five"

ku "nine"

We sometimes called this the Like the u in put. "gutslash" because it seems to come from the gut. Like the ay in hay. This and the one before it are almost Like the ay in hay. indistinguishable even Koreans cant tell the difference most of the time. A combination of and , this sounds like the wa in wand. This is a combination of and , and sounds like the first part of0 "whoa." Like the English "we." wi above ! pwa "look!" che "my" pae "boat" k "that"

? mw "what?"

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

Alphabet

English Equivalent
Like English "way."

Extra Points

Examples
kwe-do "orbit" ? wae "why?" choe "sin"

Like English "way." Like English "way." A combination of and , This syllable is also used as the possessive marker like the "s" in English. When such is the case, it is pronounced the same as .

this is pronounced like the u in put followed by the ee in tee.

i "righteousness"

Like the ya sound in yacht. Somewhat similar to the you in young. Like the yo in yo wassup.

! ya "hey"

yt "taffy" yo "bedspread" u-yu "milk" yae-gi "story" ye "yes"

Like the English you.

Like the English yea. Like the ye in yet.

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

Notable features of Hangeul

Type of writing system: alphabet Direction of writing: Until the 1980s Korean was usually written from right to left in vertical columns. Since then writing from left to right in horizontal lines has become popular, and today the majority of texts are written horizontally.

Number of letter: 24 (jamo): 14 consonants and 10 vowels. The letters are combined together into syllable blocks.

The shapes of the the consontants g/k, n, s, m and ng are graphical representations of the speech organs used to pronounce them. Other consonsants were created by adding extra lines to the basic shapes.

The shapes of the the vowels are based on three elements: man (a vertical line), earth (a horizontal line) and heaven (a dot). In modern Hangeul the heavenly dot has mutated into a short line.

Spaces are placed between words, which can be made up of one or more syllables.

The sounds of some consonants change depending on whether they appear at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a syllable.

A number of Korean scholars have proposed an alternative method of writing Hangeulinvolving writing each letter in a line like in English, rather than grouping them into syllable blocks, but their efforts have been met with little interest or enthusiasm.

In South Korea hanja are used to some extent in some Korean texts.

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

Used to write
Korean ( / ), a language spoken by about 63 million people in South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. The relationship between Korean and other languages is not known for sure, though some linguists believe it to be a member of the Altaic family of languages. Grammatically Korean is very similar to Japanese and about 70% of its vocabulary comes from Chinese.

The Hangeul alphabet ()

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

The double consonants marked with * are pronounced fortis. There is no symbol in IPA to indiciate this.

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows:

Note on the transliteration of Korean

There are a number different ways to write Korean in the Latin alphabet. The methods shown above are: 1. (first row) the official South Korean transliteration system, which was introduced in July 2000. You can find further details at www.mct.go.kr. 2. (second row) the McCune-Reischauer system, which was devised in 1937 by two American graduate students, George McCune and Edwin Reischauer, and is widely used in Western publications. For more details of this system see: http://mccune-reischauer.org

Download
Download a Korean alphabet chart in Word or PDF format (letters arranged in South Korean order but without the double consonants).

Sample text in Korean (hangeul only)

Sample text in Korean (hangeul and hanja)

Transliteration
Modeun Ingan-eun Tae-eonal ttaebuteo Jayuroumyeo Geu Jon-eomgwa Gwonrie Iss-eo Dongdeunghada. Ingan-eun Cheonbujeog-euro Iseong-gwa Yangsim-eul Bu-yeobadass-eumyeo Seoro Hyungje-ae-ui Jeongsin-euro Haengdongha-yeo-yahanda.

The Korean alphabet is very easy to learn, in fact it might only take you 35 min to learn. When learning Korean, the first thing to do is probably learning how to read it. Its really a very simple and quite scientific way of writing and can be learned in no time. If you dont learn the writing, then youll have a really hard time pronouncing t hings correctly. Here is a guide to reading Korean: The Korean writing system, Hangul, is an alphabetic syllabary. In other words, there is a character for each sound, but they are put together in syllabic units. Each syllabic unit also forms a character in itself. So if I were to write a name (Dan) in English, but in Korean style, I would write it like this: . There are four possible spots for letters in Korean. In the following diagram, C means

consonant, and V means vowel.

There must always be something in the first C

position and the V position, but the C positions on the bottom are optional. The consonants of the Korean alphabet are as follows: