Introduction

Welcome to your first Korean lesson on Holangi!

You are here because you want to know how to speak Korean, and the very first step of this journey starts with the most fundamental concept of the Korean language: the “Korean Alphabet” also known as Hangul (also written “Hangeul”).

To fully grasp the Korean language's vocabulary and grammar, it's crucial to first become proficient in reading South Korea's official writing system.

Worry not! This system being composed by characters and not letters, it may seem complex to english learners at first but it is actually pretty easy to understand.

Note that only for this course we will use romanization (spelling Korean words in english letters) in order to teach you the pronunciation of the characters.
However, once you start to master reading this alphabet, it is better to only use Hangul for learning, since romanization often leads to mispronunciation.

Origin Of Hangul

This part is only for those who are curious about the historical origin of Hangul. You can skip it if you want!

It was king Sejong (세종) who created the Hangul alphabet with with the help of scholars from the royal academy called Jiphyeonjeon (집현전) in 1443. At first this alphabet was not called Hangul but Hunminjeongeum (훈민정음) which means "Correct Sounds for the Instruction of People".

At that time, Korean people used Chinese characters named Hanja (한자). The learning of these characters was actually more difficult to access for the lower classes of society, who couldn’t afford the education to learn to read and write it fluently.

According to king Sejong, Hanjas being of foreign origin didn’t completely suit the Korean language and lower classes couldn’t fully express the words and meaning of the Korean language. That is why the first goal of the Hangul system was to simplify Chinese characters.

When the Hunminjeongeum preface was published and promulgated to the public in 1446, it faced a heavy opposition from higher aristocrats who considered Hanjas to be the only legitimate system. Therefore, only women and under-educated people were using this new writing system. For a long time Hangul was not official and was even rejected by later kings.

During the Japanese colonization, both Hangul and Korean language were prohibited. However, Hangul was still taught in schools. In 1912, a man named Ju Si-gyeong coined the name "Hangul" (한글) for the alphabet, which until then was still called "Eonmun" (언문 = "folk script").

It was only in 1948 that Hangul was finally adopted through legislation. Hanja did not completely disappear and is still used in certain situations. For example, you can sometimes see Hanja characters in newspaper articles.

How to read Hangul - Vowels (모음)

Here is the list of the first vowels that we are going to learn, starting with the simplest ones.

• ㅏ
  (a)
• ㅓ
  (eo)
• ㅗ
  (o)
• ㅜ
  (u)
• ㅡ
  (eu)
• ㅣ
  (i)
• ㅑ
  (ya)
• ㅕ
  (yeo)
• ㅛ
  (yo)
• ㅠ
  (yu)

Listen well and try your best to memorize which character produces which sound. Notice also the subtle difference between some sounds, like ㅓ(eo) and ㅗ(o).

Learning how to read Hangul is not difficult but it requires a first “learning by heart” step

These symbols represent vowels but in order to make their writing correct, they have to be associated with a consonant.

The first consonant we will study is written “ㅇ”. This consonant is silent consonant: when paired with a vowel, this consonant doesn’t make any sound on its own but helps to form a correct Hangul character.

Therefore in Korean the correct writing of the sound "a" is not written "ㅏ" but "아".

The other vowels listed above are transformed this way:

• 아
  (a)
• 어
  (eo)
• 오
  (o)
• 우
  (u)
• 으
  (eu)
• 이
  (i)
• 야
  (ya)
• 여
  (yeo)
• 요
  (yo)
• 유
  (yu)

You can see that these characters are combined in a specific order, they cannot be put together in a different order like “ㅏㅇ” or “ㅓㅇ” etc…

Another consonant easy to learn is the “ㅎ” which makes a “h” sound at the beginning of the word like in in the word hat. If we combine it with those vowels, it makes the following pattern:

• 하
  (ha)
• 허
  (heo)
• 호
  (ho)
• 후
  (hu)
• 흐
  (heu)
• 히
  (hi)
• 햐
  (hya)
• 혀
  (hyeo)
• 효
  (hyo)
• 휴
  (hyu)

Once again take your time in order to memorize everything in this lesson. Knowing all of these vowels by heart will greatly help you to understand the following lessons.

In the next lesson, we will associate these vowels with consonants in order to shape and learn our first Korean words!

Vocabulary

Here are some very first words, only containing vowels, to practice them:

• 우유
  Milk
• 오이
  Cucumber
• 아이
  Child
• 여우
  Fox