Korean is written from left to right. Words look like an arrangement of blocks, each block being a syllable. Each syllable is made up of letters which are arranged in a specific ways. All the consonants are placed on the left side and among the vowels, there are some which are placed on the right, at the bottom and at the top of the block. In addition, certain basic vowels can combine to form new vowels whereas some consonants can form double consonants which are pronounced with force.
Some of the difficulties I encountered when reading are that the pronunciation of some letters change according to their position in the word. However, I have not faced any big hurdle when reading and practicing pronunciation because most of the sounds are very similar to the ones used in Bengali. I can fairly easily imitate the pronunciations by listening but it is more difficult to read since some of the pronunciations change from word to word. This is very similar to English where the way we say ‘th’ is different in ‘the’ and in ‘Thames’.
Nevertheless I am fairly certain that with practice and greater exposure to the language, I will be able to know intuitively, how to read properly.
Comments
It is great you're able to learn Korean pronunciation through your first language, Bengali. I was actually using Hindi for that purpose too :)