You don’t need a black belt in Taekwondo to master the Korean language, actually… reading Hangul (Korean writing) is surprisingly easy!
That’s the main point I am trying to make in this post. While the Korean characters seem complex at first, they are easy to read within one week. Skip the touristic English metro maps, and start learning the way the correct way!
Truth is that this information applies for a specific group, but I stumbled upon a few useful things to master the Language quickly.
18 January 2010,Suna and I have decided to start recording podcasts to teach you some Korean! Here is our current lesson-plan, tell us, what else would you like to learn? (leave a comment, and we thank you for your contribution!)
- Saying Hello
- What is your name?
- Talking about the weather (nice weather, korea is cold
- Talking to cab driver (left, right, straight, stop here)
- Telephone conversation
- What to say when entering a family house
- Eating ethics (what to say)
Or, drop us a line at joop.dorresteijn@gmail.com
Korean Language
There are about 80 million Korean speakers, with large groups in Korea, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan. There are more people that can speak Korean then there are people that speak French or Italian.
Korean language was previously written using Hanja, which ‘borrowed’ Chinese characters, but pronounced them in a Korean way. In the 15th century, the national writing system called Hangul (meaning Korean) was developed.
Master the alphabet in less then a day
I’m not going to write down how to learn the alphbet. There are many guides out there that done the same. I would suggest to do only one exercise: try to master this Flash game made by Aeriagloris. The game shows a letter, and suggests 3 to 5 answers to that question. It is good because the game allows showing either Korean or English writing of the symbol. Much better then flash cards! Master the 24 Hangul letters in less then a day. [edit: here is an alternative]
Writing Korean
Hangul alphabet is applied into syllabic blocks. Each blocks contains at least two of the Korean letters. Hangul may be written either vertically or horizontally. The traditional direction is the Chinese style of writing top to bottom, right to left.
Correct Pronunciation
My friend Byeoung Cho (designer) created a colorful Korean hangul practice sheets, which proved useful when I mastered my intonations. I decided to share his work for others that want to learn as well! Note: The grey characters indicate low usage. You’re invited to leave a “thank you” in the comments when you use them!
The pictures are A4 sized, click on them for full view.
Spil Games Asia honcho with some ROK and PRC experience. Check out this blog for your daily photo feast and some background stories from Asia. 
39 Comments on "Learn to read and pronounce Korean Hangul in 2 days"
[...] – Learn to read and pronounce Korean Hangul in 2 days saved by RainHawk12008-09-07 – Korean Barbecue saved by mingkymomo2008-09-07 – Tool Time Friday | [...]
Great post! To me at first is was a great revelation to learn the korean writing system Han-gul is in fact a real phonetic alphabet with only 24 ‘letters’ 14 consonants and 10 vowels, albeit it’s character like appearance alike Japanese and Chinese.
I learned to read (in fact only pronounce) Han-gul with a great little book I got as a gift from a Korean friend.
It’s called ‘Yes, you can learn Korean language structure in 40 minutes’. ISBN 1-56591-091-5
written by Tungku Lee.
Thanks for the booklink Maurits Burgers! http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Korean-Language-Structure-Minutes/dp/1565910915/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222402835&sr=8-1
Not available on yes24.co.kr
Wow thanks a lot for that. I already created my own way to learn Hangul (take a korean lyrics, try to romantize is and then check if it’s correct with the romantization of the lyrics.) I started about a week ago and I know most of it now. but I’ll try the game and the sheets to (if you don’t mind I”m going to tell about this at my blog). because it looks great:D
[...] and 3 sheets you can print and put on your wall to look at and learn here scroll down and you’ll see it. and then I have my own way. I use a lyrics of a korean song for [...]
wow, very interesting post to me, as a korean! :-)
What are the characters that aren’t coloured?
Ah yeah thank you Nacho, The guy who made this is a graphical designer and he made the combinations and realized that not every character is used. The grey characters indicate low usage.
exactly ‘not used’ characters.
some characters are used in past age, but not used these days.
but that can be pronounced.
Thank you. ^_^
I’ve gotten the Hangul characters down thanks to this site.
That’s great! Why are you learning Korean?
Well, first of all, I love different languages. I want to learn as many as possible.
Second, I absolutely love Asian culture.
Third, where I live has a high Korean population, and I figure I will be able to use Korean in the near future more than say, Japanese or Chinese.
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hahahaha
Thank you very much! The Hangul game was very helpful and so are the charts!
Thanks alot for both the charts and the “game”! :D
Great post! I am going to start Korean right away!
Thanks a lot for this interesting pictures! :)
What great sheets! I’ve written out similar things but they are so much nicer and easy to use! Thanks a bunch!
Thanks for the charts!
I’m a writer and some of my books have been published in Korean editions. So I am given complimentary copies.
At first I just glanced at the book covers. Later I began to look at them a little longer; and finally I became intrigued with the “code-like” aspect of Hangul. Now I want to learn more.
These charts will help me.
Thanks again
Dan Carrison
very colorful and interesting charts you have here..
thank you for sharing..
this will help me to learn Korean language faster..
=)
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another great tip from a Korean:
http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/CU/CU_EN_8_6_1_1.jsp
the non colored characters are “vowels”
thank you very much for the pictures, it would be better if we can hear the pronunciation but it’s ok if there’s no sound ^^
hmmm… can somebody teach me hangul? well… i just had my spanish… hmmm… i wanted a more complicated one…
Thank you so much for the info. It actually helps a lot when learning what might seem a “difficult language” for us (westerns).
Greetings from Mexico!!!
[...] alphabet ever invented. I agree to that since I learned to read the alphabet myself in just two days. Compared to other Asian alphabets, Korean is a phonetic system of symbols that show specific [...]
This is a great help. Thanks Joop!
wow! thank you so much for the picture chart! it looks like it will come in really handy!! :DDDD
Thank you so much for this. I learned them by singing Old McDonald (ga na da ra ma ba sa etc) and another song for the vowels.
Learn to reand and pronounce Korean Hangul in 2 days @joop http://www.joop.in/Archive/learn-to-read-and-pronounce-korean-hangul-in-2-days/
[...] Re: Learn Hangul the easy way @TS: Thanks for linking to our site! Actually, Suna and I have decided to start recording podcasts to teach you some Korean! Here is our current lesson-plan, tell us, what else would you like to learn? (leave a comment, and we thank you for your contribution!)Saying HelloWhat is your name?Talking about the weather (nice weather, korea is coldTalking to cab driver (left, right, straight, stop here)Telephone conversationWhat to say when entering a family houseEating ethics (what to say) Let us know at the post mentioned earlier [...]
I just received my Hangul keyboard stickers. Pretty soon I’ll be writing on line in Hangul.
thank you very much :))))
Thanks so much for the hangul charts but it seems to me that one of the charts is missing, weren’t there supposed to be three?
Hi Was, thank you for your comment. There are three charts indeed, I have tried to find out which chart is missing but they seem to work for me. Can you try again?
Best,
Hey thanks! That korean flash game was WAYYY easier than slowly memorizing the whole of the alphabet. Mastering the game only took me about 3 hours or so! (partly because of my knowledge of chinese too)The problem for me is pronouncing the words. Some of the words sound really weird and the sounds are hard to produce for a native english speaker. Thanks again :)
Thanks for the 3 charts, I’ve printed them off and i’m using them to study :).