Learn Numbers in Korean in the easiest way only at Multibhashi

Korean is among the world’s most misunderstood and misrepresented languages because its origins are obscure and the subject of ongoing scholarly debate. Evidence suggests that Korean and Japanese belong to the Altaic language family, which also includes Turkish and Mongolian. Chinese, although it belongs to a completely different language family, influenced Korean greatly. Many believe that the language emerged from a single cultural source. But just as the Korean people of today did not descend from a single homogeneous race, the Korean language of today did not evolve from a single language. 

Determining Korean’s linguistic affiliation is complicated by a long history of contact with the Japanese and Chinese languages. Not surprisingly, Korean shares certain linguistic features with each of these languages. The modern Korean writing system, han’gul, was devised in 1443 during the reign of King Sejong, perhaps the greatest monarch of the Yi Dynasty (1392-1910). Before han’gul, other Korean scripts used a complex system of Chinese characters to represent the sounds of Korean. But because of the differences between Chinese and Korean, Chinese characters could not adequately denote Korean speech.

1. Pronunciation: To say eleven, just combine “10” or seep and “1” or eel, and you have ship-eel. Twelve is ship-ee. Easy right? Can you say your telephone number now? The other number system (hana, dool, set, etc) is for combining a number with an object-specific counter. These are the numbers you would use when counting a specific number of people, objects, or things. Up until the number 19, the straightforward way of building up large numbers that you learned above for the “general number system” is used in this system as well. So “eleven” is “ten” or yul and “one” or hana, yul-hana. “Nineteen” is yul together with the number “nine” or ahop, yul-ahop.

하나 = one

둘 = two

셋 = three

넷 = four

다섯 = five

여섯 = six

일곱 = seven

여덟 = eight

아홉 = nine

열 = ten

2. Counting in Korean: When counting anything in Korean, you need to use the pure Korean numbers. In addition, one thing that is very hard for English speakers to wrap their head around is that, when counting most things in Korean, you need to also include a ‘counter.’ The most common counters are:

개 = counter for things

명 = counter for people

번 = counter for behaviors/actions

There are many more counters, but if you can’t remember the specific counter of something, you can usually substitute “개” (the counter for “thing”) instead. You will learn the more difficult counters as you progress through future lessons. For now, the goal is to get you accustomed to using these three simple counters.

3. Number System in Korean: Over the years the Korean language has developed two systems for numbering things. Korea and China have a long history, and the first number system we’ll learn was derived from Chinese characters (though the words themselves are uniquely Korean). 

• The first set of numbers is called the Sino-Korean numbers system. This set has its roots in Chinese numbers, so you might want to think of this one as using the “China System”. If you know Chinese, some of the numbers may sound familiar to you. 
• The Native Korean numbers system is a bit more modern than the Sino-Korean numbers system. Like the country of Korea, it has a much lower population (only 99 numbers to be precise), and it tends to be more than one layer!

If you’re ready to take things to the next level, you may wish to join our Korean language Course where we give you weekly lessons, accountability, personal coaching, and live monthly training to keep you motivated along the way to learning the Korean language!