Word of the Day: 쉽다 - to be easy
한국어 시험이 쉬웠어요.
The Korean exam was easy.

Learn Hangul

Welcome to Learn Korean Now and the first lessons for learning Korean.

In order to learn Korean, it is best that you learn how to read it first. Here at Learn Korean Now, you will learn how to properly read the Korean alphabet, also known as Hangul. Romanization is a method of writing Korean words using English characters, which will not be used here.

Since we strive for a full education at Learn Korean Now, you will learn to read Korean properly. Best of all - it's easy!

Hangul is actually one of the easiest alphabets to learn. Korea has one of the highest literacy rates because of this, and soon you will be reading Hangul just like a native Korean.

Hangul is much easier to learn than you might think, simply based on the fact it actually is an alphabet. There are letters, and you combine the letters to form syllables and words. Many people have a fear of learning Korean, because they believe it will be difficult like Chinese. They may look similar to someone who has never studied either, but they are vastly different. Korean is one of the easiest languages to learn to read and write, while Chinese is probably one of the hardest.

Now with all the fear gone, let's dive in and get started.

  • First we will cover the vowels. There are two lessons on vowels. The first lesson teaches the 8 basic vowel sounds in Korean, whereas the second lesson will teach the rest of the vowels. The rest of the vowels are simply slight modifications and combinations of the first 8 vowel, so they are easy to learn.
  • Next we will take a look at consonants. Many of these are very similar to the same sounds you hear in English (m, n, h, p, g, etc). It's simply learning a new symbol, or way of writing, that particular sound. Others have slight differences, which we will also cover.
  • Finally, we will take a look at a few irregular pronunciation problems that you may run into. Irregular Pronunciations will cover those situations where the word is pronounced slightly different than what you would initially think.

Lesson One

If you are just starting to learn Korean, this is the first lesson you should cover. We will cover the vowels of the alphabet in these two sections.

Hangul Vowels
More Hangul Vowels: Combinations and Modifications

Lesson Two

After learning the vowels, you must learn the consonants. The following two lessons cover the consonants and how we combine them with the vowels you have previously learned from Lesson One.

Hangul Consonants: An In-Depth Look at All Consonants
Double Consonants - What Happens When Two Are Next To Each Other?

Lesson Three

While Hangul is mostly regular, there are a few irregular pronunciations used that make speaking certain words easier. The following section will introduce these situations so that you can sound like a native.

Irregular Pronunciations

Lesson Four

The following section consists of tongue twisters in Korean. We recommend that you visit this section for some fun listening and speaking exercises only after you are comfortable with Korean. This section is not required in order to know how to read or speak Korean, but you may enjoy the challenge.

Fun Reading and Speaking Exercises