Hangeul- Consonants

LET'S LEARN HANEGUL (한글)! PART 1

Hangeul (한글) is the name of the Korean alphabet, it has 24 letters that are divided into consonants and vowels. To learn proper Korean it is extremely important for you to learn how to read Hangeul (한글) instead of reading Romanization (conversion of writing from a writing system to Roman script -the letters that you are now reading).


LET'S START!

Just like English, Hangeul has consonants and vowels.

CONSONANTS- English letters cannot accurately represent Korean letters, but the sound of English letters can help give you an idea of the real sounds. 

Just like the pronunciation of the letters in English changes depending on their position, Korean letters do the same thing. 

The following table shows the letters, their name and their pronunciation according to where they're placed.

*More like an in between sound between T and D. 

**The sound is a strong J or an sound between J and CH. If you try to say the 'J' while pushing air out of your mouth it would have kind of the same sound.

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Once you've practiced those, I want to introduce you to what I call paired consonants. What are those? Paired consonants are consonants that repeat themselves (so you write them twice) but they count as one letter.

Only 5 consonants have a 'paired consonant'. Those are:

ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅈ

And this is what they look like 'paired':

ㄲ,ㄸ,ㅃ,ㅆ,ㅉ

This is how you pronounce them:
ㄲ= Gone
ㄸ=Date
ㅃ=Bird
ㅆ=Sober
ㅉ=Jim

Go ahead and practice 'reading' those. Memorize the way they look and the sound. Practice, practice, practice.