Learn Hangul
Every letter with its real name, its sound, and the key you press for it. Tap any letter to open it.
14 basic — learn these first
Sounds like: between g and k
Keyboard: r
Softer than English g at the start of a word, closer to k.
On the name: Not “gieuk” like the others — the 1527 primer that fixed these names had no Chinese character for that sound and borrowed a near one.
Sound descriptions are approximations — Korean has sounds English does not, and a few (ㅡ, ㅓ, ㄹ) have no honest English equivalent at all. Use them to get close, then copy a native speaker.
How letters become blocks
Korean does not write letters in a line like English. They stack into square syllable blocks, and the shape of the vowel decides the layout: a vowel with a long vertical line sits to the right of the consonant, a vowel with a long horizontal line sits underneath it. Once you see that, the blocks stop looking like symbols and start looking like spelling.
vowel stands upright → goes to the right
vowel lies flat → goes underneath
final consonant goes at the bottom
flat vowel below, final consonant under that
ㅇ fills the consonant slot and stays silent
The bottom letter only has seven sounds
A consonant at the bottom of a block is called 받침 (batchim). There are twenty-seven possible spellings down there — and they collapse into just seven sounds. This is the fact that saves beginners the most time: you do not have to learn twenty-seven endings, you have to learn seven.
| Sound | Spelled | Example |
|---|---|---|
| k | ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ ㄳ ㄺ | 책 chaek (book) |
| n | ㄴ ㄵ ㄶ | 산 san (mountain) |
| t | ㄷ ㅅ ㅆ ㅈ ㅊ ㅌ ㅎ | 옷 ot (clothes) |
| l | ㄹ ㄼ ㄽ ㄾ ㅀ | 물 mul (water) |
| m | ㅁ ㄻ | 밤 bam (night) |
| p | ㅂ ㅍ ㄿ ㅄ | 밥 bap (rice) |
| ng | ㅇ | 강 gang (river) |
The spelling still matters — it comes back when the next syllable starts with a vowel, and that is what makes 좋아요 sound like jo-a-yo rather than how it looks.
What to do next
Reading comes faster than people expect, because Korean borrows more English than you think. The moment you can sound out blocks, a chunk of every menu and shop sign becomes legible: 커피 coffee, 치킨 chicken, 아메리카노 americano, 택시 taxi, 카페 café.
Common questions
How long does it take to learn Hangul?
Reading it: an evening for the letters, a few days before it stops feeling like decoding. Hangul was designed in the 1440s specifically to be learnable by people who had no time to study, and the consonant shapes are diagrams of where your tongue goes. It is genuinely the easy part of Korean — the grammar is where the work is.
Why is ㅇ sometimes silent?
Every Korean syllable block needs a consonant in the first slot. When a syllable actually starts with a vowel sound there is nothing to put there, so ㅇ fills the space and stays silent — 아 is just 'a'. At the bottom of a block the same letter does have a sound: the ng in sing. One shape, two jobs, depending on where it sits.
What is the difference between ㄱ, ㅋ and ㄲ?
Breath and tension, not voicing. ㄱ is relaxed with no puff of air, ㅋ is the same sound with a puff (hold a hand in front of your mouth and you will feel it), ㄲ is tense — throat tight, no air at all. English uses voicing to separate g from k, so this is a distinction English speakers have to learn to hear rather than one they already own.
Should I learn Hangul before romanization?
Yes, and it is the single highest-value decision a beginner makes. Romanization cannot represent Korean sounds accurately — ㅓ gets written 'eo', which reliably produces the wrong sound — so every hour spent reading romanized Korean builds pronunciation habits you will have to unlearn. The alphabet takes a weekend. Do that first.
Do I need to learn the letter names?
Not to read. They matter when someone spells a word out loud for you, and when you look things up in a Korean dictionary, which orders entries by this sequence. Learn the sounds first and pick up the names later.