Introduction
For now, don't even think about words or grammar or anything until you can read and pronounceKorean letters and syllables. Without being able to read Korean, it is very difficult to continuestudying other parts of the language.
In the lessons in Unit 0 I will provide the Romanized equivalents to the Korean alphabet. However, I highly suggest that once you know how to read the Korean alphabet, you should completely abandon the Romanizations. For example, in the future, instead of studying like this:
학교 (hak-kyo) = school
You should study like this:
학교 = school
At any rate, study these characters like crazy. Memorizing them at first is hard, but it needs to bedone. Luckily, Korean has a fairly simple 'alphabet', although it seems strange to most Englishspeakers at first because it is completely different than English.The following are the first set of Korean consonants that you need to get into your brain. There is no easy way to explain them, you just need to memorize them:
ㅂ= b
ㅈ= j
ㄷ= d
ㄱ= k
ㅅ= s
ㅁ= m
ㄴ= n
ㅎ= h
ㄹ= r/l (This sound is very difficult to write in English, and is the reason why people fromKorea/Japan have trouble pronouncing the R and L sound in Enrish. The sound of this letter (to me) is half way between an R and L. For example, if you were to say "I hadda good time lastnight" the ㄹ sound is very similar to the "dd" in the slang "hadda." It's not quite and R, and it's not quite an L.)
Memorize those before you go any further.
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Next are the basic vowels you will need to know. Again, do whatever you can to memorize these.
ㅣ= i
ㅏ= a
ㅓ= eo (Romanized as "eo" but it sounds closer to "uh" in English)
ㅡ= eu
ㅜ= u
ㅗ= o
You should notice that the first three vowels are drawn vertically, and the bottom three are drawn horizontally. I you can't see what I mean, look at the following word below.
ㅣ= I ㅡ= EU
ㅏ= A ㅜ= U
ㅓ= EO ㅗ= O
In that picture, it should be clear that the ones on the left are drawn vertically, and the ones on the right are drawn horizontally. The difference is very important because the way every Korean letter is written depends on if the vowel is drawn vertically or horizontally.
Let's take a look at how it is done.
Korean is written into "blocks" that make up one syllable. One block always has exactly one syllable. The blocks are ALWAYS drawn in one of the following ways:
1 1 1 2 1 2
2 2 3
3
Important rules you need to know about these structures:
1. Number "2" is ALWAYS a vowel. Always always always always always.
2. Number "1, 3 (and sometimes 4) are ALWAYS consonants. Always.
3. Blocks containing a horizontally drawn vowel are always drawn in one of these two ways:
1 1
2 2
3
4. Blocks containing a vertically drawn vowel are always drawn in one of these two ways:
1 2 1 2
3
Now that you know those rules, it is just a matter of putting the consonants and vowels togetherto make blocks. For example, if I want to write "kan":
Step 1: Determine if the vowel is horizontal or vertical. a (ㅏ) is vertical, so we will use:
1 2 or 1 2
3
Step 2: Determine if the syllable ends in a consonant. Yes, it does. So we need to fill 1, 2 and 3, so we need to use:
1 2
3
Step 3: Place the starting letter "k (ㄱ)", the middle letter "a (ㅏ)" and the ending letter "n (ㄴ)" into 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
It should be like this: 간 (kan)
Let's practice a few before we finish:
ㅂ = b
ㅓ = eo
ㅂ = b
ㅓ is vertically aligned, so if we make a syllable we would write: 법 (beob)
ㅈ = j
ㅜ = u
ㅜis horizontally aligned, so if we make a syllable we would write: 주 (ju)
ㅎ = h
ㅗ = o
ㅗis horizontally aligned, so if we make a syllable we would write: 호 (ho)
That's it for this lesson! Hopefully you aren't too confused.In the next lesson, we will start looking at some more letters!
At this point I suggest you practice making as many blocks as possible on your own. Study everything I just taught you for a few days, and make sure you understand everything. Before we move on, you should be able to:
1. Recognize the vowels and consonants that were taught in today's lesson
2. Be able to make syllables by putting together formations of vowels and consonants
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Authors Note:
First time kong gumawa ng story tungkol sa pagtuturo ng Korean , kaya please kung may mali sa mga nabanggit ko.. pakisabihan na lang ako... hehehe Thanks sa magbabasa nito :)
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