Alphabet in Korean : Hangul Consonants (자음)

Hey Hello! Before all, graditute for reading my articles. I'm sharing Hangul learning materials with y'll that I made for my friend. Hope you all acheive your goal in Hangul learning!

Today, we will take the first step of Hanguel learning, which is about "Consonants" of Korean alphabet "Hangul". Go get it !

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Hangul  Overview

• Hangul which was developed in 1443 by King Sejong in Chosun dynasty has a meaning of Korean written language - there are some controversal opinions about the meaning of this name though

Early form of Hangul when it was invented. This writing says why King Sejong invented our own written language so called "Hunminjeongeum" in Chosun dyversity

• Each letter in Hangul makes one syllable using 2 ~ 3 components : Jaeum(Consonant), Moeum(Vowel), Bachim(Final consonant)

• Hangul has 19 consonants, 21 vowels and 27 final consonants

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Each Korean letter makes one syllable using 2 ~ 3 components

Korean letter is basically composed of 3 parts.

1. Consonant called Jaeum(자음) which is positioned at the top of letter

2. Vowel called Moeum(모음)

3. Final consonant called Bachim(받침) that is optional

 

With combination of 자음(1) and 모음(2), the letter can make one syllable (refer to the left image below). Additionally, 받침(3) - the final consonants can be added and differ the sound filling up the bottom one the letter (refer to the right image below). After all, each Korean letter makes one syllable. This is the point.

 

2 types of Korean letter - Hangul, Korean alphabet cobinations

 

 

 

 

 

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This is all of Korean alphabets, Hangul - 

• 19 consonants, 21 vowels and 27 final consonants

Consonants (19)	Simple Consonants Double Consonants	ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ
Vowels (21)	Simple Vowels Compound Vowels	ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ  ㅠ ㅡㅣ ㅐ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅢ
Final Consonants (27)	-	ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅆ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㄳ ㄵ ㄶ ㄺ ㄻ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㄿ ㅀ ㅄ

 

Just a lot to memorize (lol). The shapes of consonants and vowels look like below. Let's check out the following table that shows matching alpabets between Hangul and English.

 

 

Matching English alphabets and phonetic symbol

There are fixed rules of converting Hangul sound to English. However, confusions can occur if you read only "matching english" because English itself allows each alphabet could have different sounds like you know. To minimize the problem, formalized phonetic symbols are added which is currently published by Korean portal website NAVER.

	Hangul	English	Phonetic symbol
Simple consonant	ㄱ	g	g/k
	ㄴ	n	n
	ㄷ	d	d/t
	ㄹ	r/l	r/l
	ㅁ	m	m
	ㅂ	b	b/p
	ㅅ	s	s
	ㅇ	(silent)  or  -ng	Ø/-ŋ
	ㅈ	j	ʈʃ/ɖʒ
	ㅊ	ch	ʈʃʰ
	ㅋ	k	kʰ
	ㅌ	t	tʰ
	ㅍ	p	pʰ
	ㅎ	h	h
Double consonant	ㄲ	kk	k*
	ㄸ	tt	t*
	ㅃ	pp	p*
	ㅆ	ss	s*
	ㅉ	jj	ʈʃ*

* As you can see, the sound of "ㄹ" is somewhere between "r" and "l" or even both possibly. Also there is no "f" sound in Korean. So, you can forget about "f" while speaking Korean lol.

 

The table above looks so systematic. But, can you read consonants without a vowel ? Basically not possible. For our convenience, let's read them with "a" sound. "a" sound is written as "ㅏ" in Korean - The first vowel in the first table above.

 

 

 

 

 

Now you can read this

	Korean Consonants + ㅏ (a)	English Consonants + a
Simple	가	ga
	나	na
	다	da
	라	la (ra)
	마	ma
	바	ba
	사	sa
	아	a
	자	ja
	차	cha
	카	ka
	타	ta
	파	pa
	하	ha
Double	까	kka
	따	tta
	빠	ppa
	싸	ssa
	짜	jja

 

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Daily Practice

What you need to practice at this point is read the last table from top to bottom with voice out repeatedly until you can read them without seeing poetic symbols.

 

Let's get it yeah~~!

 

 

Move on to the Vowel in Korean lesson when you are ready.

Alphabet in Korean : Hangul Vowels (모음)