For this week's class, we talked about the Korean alphabet again and try to consolidate the foundation before actually practicing reading and speaking.
The actual alphabetical order is listed below, which is separated into consonants and vowels:
ㄱ ㄲ ㄴ ㄷ ㄸ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅃ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ
ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ
The following are the first set of Korean consonants that you need to get into your brain. There is no easy way to explain to them, you just need to memorize them:
ㄱ= k
ㄴ= n
ㄷ= d
ㄹ=r/l*
ㅁ= m
ㅂ= b
ㅅ= s
ㅈ= j
ㅎ= h
There is no perfect way to represent Korean characters using English letters (or sounds). The English letters presented above are the letters that will commonly be found being used to represent their respective Korean letters. While it is helpful (at first) to memorize the general sound of a Korean letter by using the English letter – but Korean sounds are vastly different than English sounds. Not only are Korean sounds different than English sounds – but English sounds different depending on who is speaking (because of accents). Therefore, there is no perfect way to represent Korean sounds in English.
For example:
“K” and “G” used to represent “ㄱ.”
Or “D” and “T” to represent “ㄷ”
Or “R” and “L” to represent “ㄹ”
Next are the basic vowels:
ㅣ = i
ㅏ = a
ㅓ = eo (Romanized as “eo” but it sounds closer to “uh” in English)
ㅡ = eu
ㅜ = u
ㅗ = o
Korean is written into “blocks” that make up one syllable. One block always has exactly one syllable. The blocks are ALWAYS drawn in one of the following ways:
Important rules you need to know about these structures:
1. Number “2” is ALWAYS a vowel. Always always always always always.
2. Number “1, 3 (and sometimes 4) are ALWAYS consonants. Always.
3. Blocks containing a horizontally drawn vowel are always drawn in one of these two ways:
4. Blocks containing a vertically drawn vowel are always drawn in one of these two ways:
For example, if I want to write “bab”:
Step 1: Determine if the vowel is horizontal or vertical. a (ㅏ) is vertical, so we will use:
Step 2: Determine if the syllable ends in a consonant. Yes, it does. So we need to fill 1, 2, and 3, so we need to use:
Step 3: Place the starting letter “b (ㅂ)”, the middle letter “a (ㅏ)” and the ending letter “b (ㅂ)” into 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
ㄱ = k
ㅏ = a
ㄴ = n
ㅏ is vertically aligned, so if we make a syllable we would write: 간 (kan)
ㅂ = b
ㅓ = eo
ㅂ = b
ㅓ is vertically aligned, so if we make a syllable we would write: 법 (beob)
ㅈ = j
ㅜ = u
ㅜ is horizontally aligned, so if we make a syllable we would write: 주 (ju)
ㅎ = h
ㅗ = o
ㅗ is horizontally aligned, so if we make a syllable we would write: 호 (ho)
Comments
Hey Raymond, this was a very informative post. I actually just did my cultural presentation on the history and origin of hangeul. I like how you showed not only the letters but also how to formulate a word/letter. I think this post will be helpful to any new learners and also the fact that the Korean language is phonetic and fairly easy to learn.
Hi Raymond, thanks for sharing this in-depth, well-organized post on letters in Korean. After reading your post, I realize that writing in Koreans It's not quite as complicated as I imagined. I hope that writing out these notes and making them accessible to the SDLAPNing community helped you to internalize the alphabet!