Guide to the Korean alphabet

Slightly harder than advertised

The Korean alphabet, called in English letters Hangul (the u is actually equivalent to a Russian ы, or an American i as in sin, thus proving the stupidity of American romanizers), is known for being the simplest major writing system of China/Japan/Korea/Vietnam. I myself tried to learn it for three days, finishing learning it only on the third. Contrary to many people’s impressions, I did not find learning it particularly easy for an alphabet, partially due to the many muddled descriptions of the Korean sounds out there online. I found it notably harder than the Republic of China’s 注音 script for phonetically spelling Mandarin (though it’s only used as a guide for pronouncing the characters, rather than as a replacement for the characters themselves). Thus, I wrote a guide to make learning the script for English speakers easy.

The Korean alphabet has (by my count) 33 letters representing individual sounds. There are also seven more digraphs for vowel clusters and eleven more digraphs for consonant clusters, which I will not cover, but are extremely straightforward byproducts of the other letters. There is a complete list of Korean syllables here, which is useful for typing into Google Translate and flash cards.

ㄱ -this is the letter k, but is pronounced g if preceded by a consonant. This consonant is voiced (i.e., with the vocal cords moving during pronunciation).

ㄲ -this is the letter g, but unvoiced. Same as Mandarin g (as 过).

ㄴ -this is the letter n.

ㄷ -this is the letter t, but is pronounced d if preceded by a consonant. This consonant is voiced.

ㄸ -this is the letter d, but unvoiced. Same as Mandarin d (as in 的).

ㄹ -mixture of l and r.

ㅁ -this is the letter m.

ㅂ -this is the letter p, but is pronounced b if preceded by a consonant. This consonant is voiced.

ㅃ -this is the letter b, but unvoiced. Same as Mandarin b (as in 不).

ㅅ -Unvoiced “s”.

ㅆ -Voiced “s”.

ㅇ -stands for “ng” when a final consonant in a syllable, no sound otherwise.

ㅈ -Generally romanized as “j”, but in fact more comparable to a voiced Mandarin “c” (i.e., the consonant cluster “ts”) as in 词 and a voiced Mandarin q as in 去. However, unlike in these Mandarin consonants, where, according to the commenter Davenport below, “the tip of your tongue touches right behind where your upper front teeth meet the gum ridge”, “in ㅈ and the related consonants, the flat middle of your tongue touches the roof of your mouth”.

ㅉ -Similar to Mandarin z as in 子 (i.e., the consonant cluster “ds”) and j as in 就.

ㅊ -Similar to Mandarin c as in 词 and q as in 去. This consonant is unvoiced.

ㅋ -stands for the consonant cluster “kh”. This consonant is unvoiced.

ㅌ -stands for the consonant cluster “th” (not the English phoneme made by these letters). This consonant is unvoiced.

ㅍ -stands for the consonant cluster “ph” (not f). This consonant is unvoiced.

ㅎ -this is the letter h.

ㅏ -this is the letter a.

ㅐ -this is the letter “e”.

ㅑ -extra horizontal stroke on a vowel letter indicates a “y” before that letter. So “ya”.

ㅒ -See the principle behind ㅑ.

ㅓ -English “uh” sound. Same as Mandarin e as in 的.

ㅔ -same sound as “ㅐ”

ㅕ -See the principle behind ㅑ.

ㅖ -See the principle behind ㅑ.

ㅗ -“o” sound. Russian о.

ㅛ -See the principle behind ㅑ.

ㅜ -“oo” sound. Russian у.

ㅠ -See the principle behind ㅑ.

ㅡ -i as in “sin”; Russian ы.

ㅣ-“ee” sound. Russian и.

The final consonant of a Korean syllable is often silent. There are a lot more pronunciation rules in Korean than implied by the letters of the alphabet (e.g., ㄴ is sometimes not pronounced ㄴ in some words; some consonant clusters are sometimes not pronounced as consonant clusters); the quickest way to learn them is, in my opinion, to enter Korean words you see into Google Translate and listen to the sounds they make. Once you’ve listened to enough such sounds, you’ll remember the pronunciation rules.