Lesson 1
Congratulations on your decision to
start learning the Korean script! You will see that being able to read Korean
will baffle your friends and enrich your life. Also, you will no longer be an
analphabet when travelling to Korea.
Even though Korean may look just like
Chinese or Japanese to the untrained eye, it is actually much easier, because
the characters are a combination of just 24 letters and a few simple
variations, rather than a few thousand more or less random drawings. So even
going at a relaxed pace of 4 letters per lesson, you will have learned
everything you need to read Korean after just a few lessons, while the Japanese
or Chinese scripts take years to master!
Let's
start!
The
first Korean letter you should learn is Bieup:
ㅂ
This
is a consonant and it's pronounced as p or b.
Of
course you can't read anything with just this one consonant, so here's a vowel
to go with it:
ㅏ
This
is the vowel a as in father.
Now,
in order to combine them into a Korean character, all you have to do is to try
to fit them into an imaginary little square box. This is done by writing the
letter ㅏ right next to ㅂ,
like this:
바
Can
you guess how this character is pronounced?
It's
pronounced "ba" and it's the Korean word for a bar. Easy, isn't it?
Now,
the next important letter is Nieun:
ㄴ
This
is a regular n. Listen to Nieun. Can you guess how to write na now?
나
Every
character represents one syllable, so if you wanted to write baba for example,
you would need two characters, one for each ba.
Now
it's time for a little exercise. Try to read and understand the following word.
As before, hover over it in order to see the solution (you might need to allow
Javascript)
바나나
Every Korean syllable has to start
with a consonant. That makes it easy to identify the beginning and end of
syllables, but what about syllables that start with a vowel, such as the
beginning of the famous Korean greeting "annyong haseyo"? Those
syllables need a placeholder consonant that isn't pronounced. Since its
influence on the pronunciation of the syllable is zero, it is written like a
zero, too. (That's how you can remember it anyway)
O
It
is called Ieung. So the syllable a would actually be written as 아.
Here
are some words for practise:
아바 name of a popular band
아바나 capital of Cuba
One more thing for today: it is
possible to have syllables that end in a consonant. This typically occurs when
there is a cluster of two consonants in the middle of a word: one consonant
then forms the end of one syllable and the other forms the beginning of the
next syllable. Fitting two consonants and a vowel into a little square box is a
little more tricky, but not impossible. In most cases you write the first
consonant + vowel next to each other as before and then put the final consonant
below the two. For example, this is the syllable ban, which has no meaning of
its own:
반
Time
for another exercise. Can you read the following? It's a name.
안나 personal name
Did you manage to read that? If so, I
can promise you that you have everything it takes to be able to read Korean
fluently. This was in fact the hardest lesson of all, because you didn't have
any previous knowledge. The next lessons will build on what you learned here
and you will find them easier, also because you will be able to practise
reading much more once you know a few more letters. If you don't feel
overwhelmed right now, you can already continue with the next lesson, where you
will learn a few more letters and many more words. Otherwise, please come back
to it later.
Source:
www.learnlangs.com
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