🎯 What You'll Learn
- ✓ What is the Korean writing system called?
- ✓ How many consonants are in the Hangul alphabet?
- ✓ How many vowels are in the Hangul alphabet?
- ✓ What sound does the consonant ㄱ make?
- ✓ What sound does the consonant ㅂ make?
Hangul, core vocabulary, and the sentence patterns and politeness levels that Korean makes you choose from the first sentence. A starting point that does not pretend the honorific system can be skipped.
한글 (Hangul), created by King Sejong the Great in 1443
14 basic consonants: ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ
10 basic vowels: ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ
g/k sound (as in go)
b/p sound (as in bus)
It is silent (acts as a placeholder before a vowel)
It makes an ng sound (as in sing)
In blocks of 2–4 letters: initial consonant + vowel (+ optional final consonant)
The final consonant at the bottom of a Hangul syllable block
ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ — tense/stressed versions of ㄱ ㄷ ㅂ ㅅ ㅈ
안녕하세요 (annyeonghaseyo)
안녕히 가세요 (annyeonghi gaseyo) — "Go in peace"
Flashcards
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Multi-round mastery
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Korean is spoken by around eighty million people and has grown sharply in study demand alongside Korean film, television and music. Its alphabet, Hangul, was designed rather than inherited and can genuinely be learned in an afternoon — an unusually low barrier to entry. The real work is in the particles and the honorific system, both of which depend on recognising patterns across many examples.
Hangul is a featural alphabet where letter shapes reflect how the sound is produced. A day or two of study replaces months of fighting romanisation.
Markers like 은/는 and 이/가 have no clean English equivalent. Rules alone will not fix them; repeated contrasting examples will.
Korean encodes formality in the verb ending. Learn one register consistently at first rather than mixing forms you have not yet learned to place.
A beginner set of core vocabulary and everyday phrases with example sentences.
Yes, and it is worth the day it takes. Korean is not usefully studied through romanisation.
Politeness levels appear naturally in the example sentences rather than as a separate grammar unit.
Not yet — Korean currently has the beginner set only.
Yes — download it as a standard .apkg from the topic page, free and with no account.