Learning Korean

Learning the Korean language is not so simple as it is portrait in Korean drama and movies. You need to invest time, money as well as dedication to learn it. There are many ways to learn it, but the most effective way to learn is to start from scratch. You need to understand how the formation of the words and sound it produces while combining the letters. As compared to the Chinese and Japanese scripts, the Korean script is very simple.

The Hangul, Korean alphabet, has 24 basic letters: 14 consonant letters (ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ) and 10 vowel letters (ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ). There are also 27 complex letters formed by combining the basic letters: 5 tense consonant letters (ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ), 11 complex consonant letters (ㄳ ㄵ ㄶ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅄ) and 11 complex vowel letters (ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅢ). The alphabets are very simple if you know the basic 14 consonant and the basic 10 vowels. Here are some tips to learn that will help you learn Korean alphabets quickly:

First of all, learn the Korean kinder garden songs, there is an ample number of alphabets and number song on video streaming sites. Like learning the English alphabets, we learn from the “A B C D E F G”, you need know is to practice writing and learning the sound of each letter but unlike English alphabets the consonant cannot produce the sound of their own, they need help from the vowels, e.g. The first letter of the consonant “ㄱ” is called gi-yeok (기역), you can clearly see from its spelling that it is not a letter but a word. By combing it with vowels it forms a word and makes a word. So, while learning it is better to memorize the combination consonant and vowel, e.g., “ㄱ”+”ㅏ”=가(ga). 

Secondly, learning the numbers with the help of charts. Unlike the English language, there is no numerical letters to count numbers in Korean you need the spelling of it. Here the tricky part is that there are two forms of counting numbers in the Korean language. The Chinese counting units are also known as Sino Korean and the other one is pure Korean. In my opinion, learning the counting of numbers is more time-consuming than learning the alphabets. You cannot stop after learning the Sino Korean numbers, there are different usages for both Sino and pure Korean.