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Read Hangul in 20 minutes

Hangul was designed to be learned quickly, and it was designed on purpose — the letter shapes are pictures of your mouth. Most people can read their first Korean words within half an hour.

The ten basic vowels

Start here, not with the consonants. Every Korean syllable needs a vowel, and these ten cover most of what you will read. Notice the pattern: add one short stroke to a vowel and it gains a y sound in front.

ㅏ a	ㅑ ya	ㅓ eo	ㅕ yeo	ㅗ o
ㅛ yo	ㅜ u	ㅠ yu	ㅡ eu	ㅣ i

A vertical line means the vowel is written to the RIGHT of the consonant, and a horizontal line means it goes UNDERNEATH. That single rule tells you how to stack almost every block.

The fourteen basic consonants

The shapes are not arbitrary. They were drawn in 1443 to copy the shape your mouth makes: the k sound shows the back of the tongue raised, the n sound shows the tongue touching the ridge behind your teeth. Each one is shown here with the vowel a attached, which is how Koreans recite them.

ㄱ g	ㄴ n	ㄷ d	ㄹ r / l	ㅁ m	ㅂ b	ㅅ s
ㅇ silent / ng	ㅈ j	ㅊ ch	ㅋ k	ㅌ t	ㅍ p	ㅎ h

The circle is the odd one out. At the start of a block it is silent and just holds the space, so the block reads as the vowel alone. At the bottom of a block it is the ng of song.

The five tense consonants

Write a consonant twice and it becomes tense: the sound is sharper, and it comes out with the throat tight and no puff of air. These are hard to hear at first and easy to read, so learn the shapes now and let your ear catch up later.

ㄲ

ㄸ

ㅃ

ㅆ

ㅉ

Tense consonants change meaning. The word for I (na) and the word for to come out differ by nothing else.

The combined vowels

These are the basic vowels welded together, and they behave exactly as they look. Do not try to memorise them as new letters — read them as the two parts.

ㅐ ae	ㅒ yae	ㅔ e	ㅖ ye	ㅘ wa	ㅙ wae
ㅚ oe	ㅝ wo	ㅞ we	ㅟ wi	ㅢ ui

Modern speakers no longer distinguish ae from e in everyday speech, and the same goes for the three w sounds wae, oe and we. If you cannot hear a difference, that is because there mostly is not one any more.

Now build a block

Korean letters are not written in a line — they stack into a square block, one block per syllable. Consonant first, then the vowel to its right or underneath. Here are the first blocks worth knowing:

가
ga
Consonant + vertical vowel: the vowel sits to the right.
고
go
Consonant + horizontal vowel: the vowel sits underneath.
한
han
Three letters: h + a on the right, n tucked underneath.
국
guk
g on top, u underneath, k at the bottom. Three layers.
한국
hanguk
Two blocks, one word: Korea.
말
mal
m + a + l. It means word, or speech.
물
mul
Change the vowel and you get water.
사람
saram
Two blocks: person.
안녕
annyeong
Your first greeting, and your first silent circle.
감사합니다
gamsahamnida
Five blocks. You can read thank you now.

Now drill it. Hangul Hero shows you a letter and gives you four sounds to choose from. Ten rounds takes two minutes.