Where do you want to start?

Nobody learns Korean in general. Pick the reason you are here and start with the words that reason needs.

Not sure? Learn to read Hangul first - it takes an afternoon and everything else gets easier. Or just type what you want to say.

Why start from a reason, not a textbook

Textbooks teach Korean in the same order for everyone: greetings, then numbers, then the classroom. That order makes sense for a classroom, but it means a K-pop fan spends weeks on vocabulary they will rarely hear, and a traveller learns how to say “I am a student” before “where is the bathroom”.

Each page here starts from what you will actually meet. The K-pop page starts with the words that come up in every fan chat, including oppa, unnie, hyung and noona, and what idols say to fans. The travel page is organised the way a trip goes: your first hour, getting someone's attention, eating, finding things, and what to say when something goes wrong. The K-drama page starts with the lines that come up again and again in subtitles, and shows what the subtitles leave out.

What to do after your first page

Every line on these pages has native audio. Listen, repeat it out loud, then move on — you do not need to memorise a page before using it. When you are ready to check yourself, the games use the same phrases, and Speak It lets you practise the travel situations out loud.

Whichever page you pick, learning to read Hangul first makes everything faster. It is a small alphabet, and once you can read it you no longer depend on romanization, which is often misleading.