Learn Hangul, the Korean alphabet, and Start Learning Korean

The first step on your journey to learning Korean is to learn the Korean alphabet, also known as Hangul. While the Korean language itself is difficult to learn, Hangul was actually intentionally designed to be logical and easy to learn. Learners of Japanese and Mandarin need to learn thousands of unique characters in order to read their language, but you, my friend—you're looking at twenty-four letters/symbols.

Nice.

In this blog post, we'll get into everything you need to know to read and write Korean:

Background info: history of Hangul, how the Korean alphabet works, and the catch

Most of this blog post is going to consist of tables and audio recordings, but that information alone won't actually enable you to write anything in Korean.

Here are three things you should know if you're serious about learning Hangul:

1. Hangul's origin story, or why King Sejong wanted to get rid of Chinese Characters

Writing systems don't just appear out of nowhere: at some point, somebody somewhere has to stop and go, "Gosh, it would be great if we had a physical record of this stuff so I didn't have to memorize it."

Hangul is no exception. In a sense, it was 2,400 years in the making.

I'll skip the history lesson (expand the above box if you want it), but there are two things you should know:

With this in mind, when King Sejong introduced Hangul in 1446, he said:

2. How Hangul work, or how 24 symbols make 11,172 unique sounds

While Hangul is commonly called the Korean alphabet, it's technically what's called a syllabic alphabet (or something along those lines; there's debate).

For example, in English, we write Hangul like this: h→a→n→g→u→l.

But in Korean, instead of lining Hangul up one after the other, they combine them into blocks like this:

And this makes the Korean alphabet incredibly flexible: The 24 Hangul can be combined to make 11,172 different syllable blocks.

3. The hardest part the Korean writing system

You're going to feel pretty awesome when you finish this article: the ability to make 11,172 different syllable blocks is a massive return on your investment of learning 24 just Hangul letters.

... and then you're going to go boot up your favorite k-pop song (here's mine) and feel puzzled: many things that come out of the singer's mouth seemingly won't match what is written in Hangul on the screen.

This is the catch.

Now, before you panic, do me a favor and listen to this audio clip:

Did you hear that?

When speaking quickly, Americans tend to pronounce "t" as "d" simply because it rolls off the tongue better. If you say "better" really fast several times in a row, your tongue will eventually get "lazy" and start saying "bedder" instead.

Korean's sound changes are the same sort of deal: small adjustments to the way a sound is made in order to make it easier to pronounce. Hangul sound changes will be annoying at first, but try not to worry about it. They'll become second nature before long.

Korean Vowels

Korean has some tricky consonants, so we're going to start off with the vowels.

Korean has:

Korean basic vowels

Here's how to write the ten basic Korean vowels. Notice that:

† Korean pronunciation note: English's "oh" sound is actually a combination of two vowels. Go stand in front of a mirror and say "no" very, very slowly. Notice how, halfway through the sound, your lips change shape? That's because you're transitioning from the /o/ vowel to the /ʊ/ vowel. Korean 오 has only this initial /o/ sound; when you say 오, it should be constant—there's no movement in your lips, mouth, or jaw.

Korean complex vowels

Here's how to read and write Korean's "complex" vowels. While I'll try to give rough English approximations of each sound, you might find it easier to instead think of these sounds as being combinations of basic vowels, just like Koreans do:

Korean consonants

Korean has 10 "basic" consonants (called "plain" consonants), but several of those characters have a few different forms.

As such, we'll break Korean consonants into three categories:

Korean plain consonants

Hangul consonants are kind of tricky because many of them change slightly depending on where they appear in a word. Explaining all of Korean's sound changes is beyond the scope of this post, but I have included three audio recordings for each sound so that you can hear how it's pronunciation changes from position to position:

Some consonants also undergo a sound shift if certain letters come before or after them, and we'll cover the main situations where that happens in the next two sections.

Korean aspirated consonants

The second type of Korean consonants are called aspirated consonants. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of aspiration, hold your hand in front of your mouth and say these words for me:

That puff of air that hit your hand when you said kite, tie, and pie? That's aspiration.

You'll make aspirated consonants in two situations:

And with that, here are the next four Hangul consonants:

Korean pronunciation note: Unlike their plain counterparts, Korean aspirated consonants (aka strong consonants) sound the same, whether they appear in the beginning of a syllable or the middle of a word. However, they still become unreleased (see † from the plain consonants section) when they occur at the end of a syllable.

Korean double consonants

Last but not least, we have the Korean double consonants—sounds that are notorious because foreigners have trouble picking them out, but they're important and sound very different to Koreans. (Thankfully, they're easy to recognize in writing, because they're literally a doubled version of the plain consonant.)

Before we say anything about these sounds, please compare them with their plain counterparts side-by-side and see what you notice:

When I listen carefully, several things stick out at me:

In linguistics, the double double consonants are also called "tense" consonants, which means that you tense/tighten muscles in your lips/mouth/throat when saying them, resulting in an increased pressure.

We actually have a tense vowel in English: seat is tense, and sit is lax. If you say them both quite slowly, you should notice that when you say seat, your lips tighten and flatten, and there's a bit of tightness in your throat—whereas sit feels very relaxed. If you can grasp that, the difference between seat and sit is the same basic difference as that bewtween 바 and 빠.

Then, a couple quick notes for you:

How to combine Hangul characters into syllables

Now that we've covered all of the individual Hangul letters, there are a few things you need to know in order to turn them into syllable blocks:

1. Korean syllables need a consonant and vowel

Every syllable block needs a vowel and at least one consonant.

Then, so far as Korean spelling rules are concerned, ㅇ is a consonant, but it's also silent when it begins a syllable. This means that you can have "consonant + vowel" syllable blocks like 이 (i) and 으 (eu) that sound just like normal vowels.

2.Korean syllables can have 2–4 letters

This is pretty straightforward, thankfully!

3. There's a certain way to combine Hangul letters into syllable blocks

The most basic Korean syllables consist of a consonant and a vowel.

Regardless of which type of syllable block you're dealing with, the final Hangul always gets placed at the very bottom of the block.

You can also have more complex final syllables that consist of two consonants. There are 11 different 4-letter blocks. One of the two final letters will be silent... unless the next syllable begins with a vowel, in which case the bottom-right consonant will shift over to the next syllable.

(Note: These images are taken from Wikipedia's section on Korean's morpho-syllabic blocks.)

Learn the Korean alphabet with examples

You've now looked over all of the Korean Hangul and gotten a crash course in how to combine them to make syllables and words. Unfortunately, to learn the Hangul, this isn't quite enough. The best way to learn the Hangul—and perhaps the only way—is to use Hangul. Write them! Read them! Paint them! Just use them.

To get started with, here are ten basic Korean words. Try to read each one, then click the "+" button to see the answer. (Of course, you can also practice writing them, if you want!)

Need to learn Hangul quickly?

The worst part about language learning is that it takes time. Thankfully, though, Hangul were designed in a logical fashion and come pretty quickly.

Having said that, to learn them, you still need to practice them: to see each Korean character in context, pronounced by native Korean speakers, and to periodically quiz yourself.

Migaku's Korean Fundamentals course:

By the time you finish the course, you'll know Hangul. As you continue with your Korean learning journey—as you read Korean texts, watch K-dramas, and sing along to Korean songs—Hangul will gradually become second nature.

You can try Migaku totally free for ten days, and if you put in about half an hour per day (~25 flashcards), you can finish our Korean Fundamentals course in that time.

So, if you're ready:

Start Learning Korean

And now you're ready to move onto the Korean language

You now know how Hangul work, but the best way to learn Hangul—and Korean, or anything—is to actually use them.

You're going to want to find the perfect resource or Korean alphabet chart—but try not to let perfect be the enemy of good enough. So long as you loosely remember how each Hangul sounds, you will commit them to memory, in time, as you spend more time with Korean.

Good luck!