Read Korean in an hour

These are not ideograms

Chinese takes years because every word is its own sign. Korean is written with an alphabet — and an invented one, not an inherited one: each consonant is a diagram of your tongue or lips. ㅁ is a closed mouth seen from the front. ㅂ is that same mouth opening.

Eight vowels to know

A vertical or horizontal stroke, plus a short tick showing which way the mouth opens. The cells edged in red are the ones English gets wrong — they’re the ones to drill.

The mouth, drawn

Ten basic consonants are enough to start. The sound given here is the initial one — several change at the end of a syllable, which we cover below.

You stack, you don’t line up

A Korean syllable is written inside a square. Consonant first, then the vowel — to the right if its stroke is vertical, underneath if it’s horizontal. A final consonant, if any, sits on the floor.

Three consonants where English has two

Here’s your head start: English already makes half of this distinction. The p in pin comes with a puff of air; the p in spin doesn’t. Korean turns that difference into separate letters — plain ㅂ (your spin-p), aspirated ㅍ (your pin-p) — and adds a third series English doesn’t have: the tense one, ㅃ, throat tight, no air at all.

The 받침: the consonant on the floor

You already do this in English — you just don’t know it. Say cat without releasing the final t: the tongue lands and stops. That’s exactly a Korean final consonant. In 밥 (cooked rice), the final ㅂ closes the lips and ends there. No little "buh" after it.

Linking

When a syllable ends in a consonant and the next one starts with a vowel, the consonant moves across. It’s written on the left and pronounced on the right.

Eight phrases you can use today