Mastering the Hangul letters: ㄱ to ㅇ

Now you’ve seen all the basic Hangul letters and understand how the letters combine to form characters. Before you learn the rest of the letters let’s practice these letters by learning words focusing on helping you get more familiar with each Hangul consonant and vowel.

I will introduce 2-3 words for each consonant and some of the vowels, and provide some listening and pronunciation tips. I will compare Korean sounds with various English pronunciations in these tips. When comparing with English, I always refer to a standard North American accent. If any of the tips seem wrong in your accent, feel free to ignore them. The most important thing is to use your ears and try to replicate the sounds.

I have chosen words to cover a variety of difference consonants and vowels. All the words incredibly common or the same as their English equivalent.

Basic Hangul letter chart

For reference, here is the letter chart introduced in the last lesson.

This is a great time to spend some more time memorizing the chart before we move on.

Your first ㄱ (g) words

Let’s start by learning some words starting with the letter ㄱ, which is pronounced similarly to an English g or k.

Tips

• ㄱ makes a sound like a g, but with less vibration in the vocal folds.
• Try making a k sound without a “puff” of air escaping your mouth.
• Remember that ㅇ makes an ng sound as a final consonant.

Your first ㄴ (n) words

We will learn more about informal and formal speech in Korean in a later lesson. For now, note that generally you use formal speech when speaking to someone older than you, or someone you are not close with.

Tips

• The ㄴ sound practically identical to the English n!
• The ㅓ vowel is romanized as eo but sounds more like the aw sound in raw, paw or thaw in an American English accent.

Your first ㄷ (d) words

Tips

• Similarly with ㄱ (g/k), ㄷ makes a sound like a d with less vibration in the vocal folds.
• Try making a t sound without a “puff” of air escaping your mouth.

Your first ㄹ (r) words

Tips

The Korean letter ㄹ sounds like an r or l. The mouth position is most similar to the l sound in ball. Try saying ball, then without moving your tongue off, pronounce 라면 (ra-myeon). This is roughly the right tongue position, but feel free to adjust move your tongue to try to match the audio recording more closely.

For the word 나라 , the ㄹ sounds much more like an r, but the tongue position is the same. The difference is in the amount of time that your tongue touches the top of your mouth. With 나라 it only touches for a brief instant.

Quiz 1: ㄱㄴㄷㄹ

Keep retrying this quiz until you start to remember the words. The questions are randomized each time.

Your first ㅁ (m) words

Your first ㅂ (b) words

Your first ㅅ (s) words

Tips

• Remember that the Korean letter ㅅ is not as strong as the English letter s.
• An s sound is formed by forcing air through a small gap between your tongue and the top of your mouth, forcing the air to speed up. To make the s sound weaker, as with the letter ㅅ, try increasing the size of the gap so that the air moves slower, and blowing more softly.

Your first ㅇ words

Tips

• Remember that the letter ㅇ does not make any sound when it’s an initial consonant.

Quiz 2: ㅁㅂㅅㅇ

Final Quiz: ㄱ to ㅇ

Finally, let’s put everything together and practice all our words for the letters ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂㅅㅇ.