๐ค Learn Korean โ Hangul
Hangul, the Korean alphabet, was made to be easy to learn: 14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels combine into syllables. Tap ๐ to hear each letter (uses your device's Korean voice).
No Korean voice on your device? The ๐ buttons need a Korean voice โ most phones have one.
Consonants โ 14 basic
Tense consonants โ 5
These are the "tight" versions โ say them with tense lips or tongue and no puff of air.
Vowels โ 10 basic
Diphthongs โ 11
Two vowel sounds glided together into one syllable.
How syllables work
A Korean syllable is initial consonant + vowel + optional final consonant (the final is called batchim). The letters are stacked into one square block:
- ํ = ใ + ใ + ใด โ "han"
- ๊ตญ = ใฑ + ใ + ใฑ โ "guk"
- ์ค = ใ + ใ โ "o" (ใ is silent at the start, so the syllable is just the vowel)
Try it โ build a syllable
Romanization here is syllable by syllable; real Korean applies sound changes between syllables.
Numbers 1โ10
Korean has two sets of numbers. Use native numbers for counting things, people and age; use Sino-Korean numbers for dates, money and phone numbers.
Native Korean
| Number | Hangul | Romanization | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ํ๋ | hana | |
| 2 | ๋ | dul | |
| 3 | ์ | set | |
| 4 | ๋ท | net | |
| 5 | ๋ค์ฏ | daseot | |
| 6 | ์ฌ์ฏ | yeoseot | |
| 7 | ์ผ๊ณฑ | ilgop | |
| 8 | ์ฌ๋ | yeodeol | |
| 9 | ์ํ | ahop | |
| 10 | ์ด | yeol |
Sino-Korean
| Number | Hangul | Romanization | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ์ผ | il | |
| 2 | ์ด | i | |
| 3 | ์ผ | sam | |
| 4 | ์ฌ | sa | |
| 5 | ์ค | o | |
| 6 | ์ก | yuk | |
| 7 | ์น | chil | |
| 8 | ํ | pal | |
| 9 | ๊ตฌ | gu | |
| 10 | ์ญ | sip |
First words โ 20 to start with
- ์๋ ํ์ธ์ annyeonghaseyo Hello
- ๊ฐ์ฌํฉ๋๋ค gamsahamnida Thank you
- ๋ค ne Yes
- ์๋์ aniyo No
- ๋ฌผ mul Water
- ๋ฐฅ bap Cooked rice / meal
- ์์ eumsik Food
- ํ์ฅ์ค hwajangsil Bathroom
- ์งํ์ฒ jihacheol Subway
- ๋ฒ์ค beoseu Bus
- ํ์ taeksi Taxi
- ๋์์ฃผ์ธ์ dowajuseyo Please help me
- ์ผ๋ง์์? eolmayeyo? How much is it?
- ์ด๋์์? eodieyo? Where is it?
- ์ฃ์กํฉ๋๋ค joesonghamnida I'm sorry
- ๋ง์์ด์ masisseoyo It's delicious
- ๊ด์ฐฎ์์ gwaenchanayo It's OK
- ์๋ ํ ๊ฐ์ธ์ annyeonghi gaseyo Goodbye (to someone leaving)
- ์๋ ํ ๊ณ์ธ์ annyeonghi gyeseyo Goodbye (to someone staying)
- ์ฌ๋ํด์ saranghaeyo I love you
More phrases โ โ 57 useful sentences for your trip.
Mini quiz โ test yourself
10 questions from the lessons above. Tap an answer to see right away if you got it.