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The Korean alphabet, Hangul

Hangul (한글) has 40 letters: 19 consonants and 21 vowels. They were designed in 1443 to be easy, and they are. The letters are pictures of your mouth and three simple strokes, packed into square blocks of one syllable each.

Open the chartBuild a block
40

letters. 0 of them are yours.

14 + 5 consonants10 + 11 vowels

Five steps

Learn Hangul in this order

  1. 1Basic consonantsFive mouth shapes and the letters built from them.ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂㅅㅇㅈㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ0/14
  2. 2Basic vowelsThree strokes: sky, earth, person.ㅏㅑㅓㅕㅗㅛㅜㅠㅡㅣ0/10
  3. 3Syllable blocksPut letters together: consonant, vowel, final consonant.Try it
  4. 4Double consonantsTense sounds: 까 against 가 and 카.ㄲㄸㅃㅆㅉ0/5
  5. 5Combined vowelsTwo vowels in one, and which ones sound the same.ㅐㅒㅔㅖㅘㅙㅚㅝㅞㅟㅢ0/11

Step 3

Build a syllable block

Korean does not write letters in a line. It stacks them into one square per syllable: a consonant, a vowel, and sometimes a final consonant underneath. Pick the letters and hear the block.

You built

가

ga

ㅏ stands up, so it goes to the right of the consonant.

1 · Consonant

2 · Vowel

3 · Final consonant (batchim)

Why the letters look like this

An alphabet you can work out

Most alphabets grew by accident. Hangul was designed, and its designers wrote down their logic in 1446. Tap any letter to hear it.

Consonants draw your mouth

Add a stroke for more breath, double a letter to make it tense.

Back of the tongue

ㄱ draws the back of the tongue lifting to the roof of the mouth.

+ strokedoubled

Tip of the tongue

ㄴ draws the tongue tip touching the ridge behind the top teeth.

+ stroke+ strokedoubledvariant

Lips

ㅁ draws the closed lips.

+ strokes+ strokesdoubled

Teeth

ㅅ draws a tooth: air hisses past it.

+ stroke+ strokedoubleddoubled

Throat

ㅇ draws the open throat.

+ strokes
All 19 consonants

Vowels grow from three strokes

Sky, earth and person; a second dot adds y.

The three seeds

A dot for the sky, a flat line for the earth, a standing line for a person.

·

One dot

A dot (now a short stroke) outside the person, or above and below the earth.

Two dots add y

The same four with a second dot: a y glide in front.

Two vowels in one

ㅗ + ㅏ = ㅘ, ㅜ + ㅓ = ㅝ, ㅡ + ㅣ = ㅢ, ㅏ + ㅣ = ㅐ.

All 21 vowels

Questions

How many letters are in the Korean alphabet?

Modern Hangul uses 40 letters: 19 consonants (14 basic, 5 double) and 21 vowels (10 basic, 11 combined). The original 1443 alphabet had 28 letters; four fell out of use, and the double and combined letters are built from the rest.

How long does it take to learn Hangul?

Most learners can read the letters, slowly, after a few hours of focused practice, and read comfortably after a week or two of daily review. Reading is not the same as understanding: you will be able to sound out words long before you know what they mean.

Who invented the Korean alphabet?

King Sejong the Great and the scholars of his court created Hangul in 1443 and published it in 1446 as Hunminjeongeum, "the correct sounds for teaching the people". Before that, Korean was written with Chinese characters, which few people could read.

Is Hangul hard to learn?

It is one of the easiest writing systems to learn. Each letter stands for one sound, the shapes follow a logic you can see, and there are only 24 basic letters. The harder part comes later: sound changes between blocks, which our X-Ray shows in every phrase.

Should I learn romanization first?

No. Romanization is a crutch that teaches English sounds for Korean letters. Use it only until you know a letter; on this site it disappears under each letter as soon as you mark it as yours.

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