You don’t need a black belt in Taekwondo to master the Korean language, actually… reading Hangul (Korean writing) is surprisingly easy!
That’s the main point I am trying to make in this post. While the Korean characters seem complex at first, they are easy to read within one week. Skip the touristic English metro maps, and start learning the way the correct way!
Truth is that this information applies for a specific group, but I stumbled upon a few useful things to master the Language quickly.
Korean Language
There are about 80 million Korean speakers, with large groups in Korea, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan. There are more people that can speak Korean then there are people that speak French or Italian.
Korean language was previously written using Hanja, which ‘borrowed’ Chinese characters, but pronounced them in a Korean way. In the 15th century, the national writing system called Hangul (meaning Korean) was developed.
Master the alphabet in less then a day
I’m not going to write down how to learn the alphbet. There are many guides out there that done the same. I would suggest to do only one exercise: try to master this Flash game made by Aeriagloris. The game shows a letter, and suggests 3 to 5 answers to that question. It is good because the game allows showing either Korean or English writing of the symbol. Much better then flash cards! Master the 24 Hangul letters in less then a day.
Writing Korean
Hangul alphabet is applied into syllabic blocks. Each blocks contains at least two of the Korean letters. Hangul may be written either vertically or horizontally. The traditional direction is the Chinese style of writing top to bottom, right to left.
Correct Pronunciation
My friend Byeoung Cho (designer) created a colorful Korean hangul practice sheets, which proved useful when I mastered my intonations. I decided to share his work for others that want to learn as well! You’re invited to leave a “thank you” in the comments when you use them!
The pictures are a4 sized, click on them for full view.
I hope you like that post!
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Great post! To me at first is was a great revelation to learn the korean writing system Han-gul is in fact a real phonetic alphabet with only 24 ‘letters’ 14 consonants and 10 vowels, albeit it’s character like appearance alike Japanese and Chinese.
I learned to read (in fact only pronounce) Han-gul with a great little book I got as a gift from a Korean friend.
It’s called ‘Yes, you can learn Korean language structure in 40 minutes’. ISBN 1-56591-091-5
written by Tungku Lee.
Thanks for the booklink Maurits Burgers! http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Korean-Language-Structure-Minutes/dp/1565910915/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222402835&sr=8-1
Not available on yes24.co.kr
Wow thanks a lot for that. I already created my own way to learn Hangul (take a korean lyrics, try to romantize is and then check if it’s correct with the romantization of the lyrics.) I started about a week ago and I know most of it now. but I’ll try the game and the sheets to (if you don’t mind I”m going to tell about this at my blog). because it looks great:D
wow, very interesting post to me, as a korean!
What are the characters that aren’t coloured?
Ah yeah thank you Nacho, The guy who made this is a graphical designer and he made the combinations and realized that not every character is used. The grey characters indicate low usage.
exactly ‘not used’ characters.
some characters are used in past age, but not used these days.
but that can be pronounced.
Thank you. ^_^
I’ve gotten the Hangul characters down thanks to this site.
That’s great! Why are you learning Korean?
Well, first of all, I love different languages. I want to learn as many as possible.
Second, I absolutely love Asian culture.
Third, where I live has a high Korean population, and I figure I will be able to use Korean in the near future more than say, Japanese or Chinese.
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hahahaha
Thank you very much! The Hangul game was very helpful and so are the charts!
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