Learn to read Korean

Korean is often said to be very easy to read. This article is to test if that’s really true. If all goes well, by the end you should be able to read just about everything.

One note before starting is that I’m not following any IPA or standardized examples that may be elsewhere online. This is a quick guide that I felt made the most sense intuitively, but it isn’t rigorous.

Consonants

Consonants (and vowels) are rigid in Korean and can only be read one way. So unlike English where ’though’, ’through’, ’tough’, ’thou’ are all different, everything in Korean is predictable.

1. There is no distinction between ‘r’ and ’l’

2. ㅅ is pronounced ’s’ by default but can become ‘sh’ to make speaking easier when combined with several vowels. A table will be shown for these cases, but you’ll be able to intuitively guess

3. ‘o’ showing up as a consonant will be explained later

4. Some English consonants do not exist. The sounds f, v, z are approximated with the following:

   • f → ㅍ(p)
   • v → ㅂ(b)
   • z → ㅈ(j)

Double consonants

Five of the consonants appear again in pairs. Explaining how to pronounce them is hard with just text, but the best analogy I can give is the double ’s’ in ‘hiss’. The ’s’ is strengthened, extend that to the other consonants.

Vowels

While there seems like a lot more than English, there are obvious patterns. Besides, English claims to only have 5 vowels but there are a lot more in reality; say “bit”, “beat”, “boot”, “but”, “boat”, “buy”, “bat”, “bait”, “bet”. The official Romanization will be slightly different from the sounds I use here.

It’s important to be rigid in pronounciations. For instance, ‘o’ should be a flat ‘o’, not ‘oh’ like English typically uses. ‘a’ should not become ‘ay’, maintain a flat ‘ah’. If you’ve heard of the very rigid Japanese vowels, the Korean vowels are essentially a superset of those.

Combination vowels

There are other vowels that are created by combining two of the above. The two vowel tables are exhaustive; you can’t arbitrarily create new ones.

Some of these vowels sound virtually identical when speaking. Distinguish them when writing or you’ll write nonsense (네 is ‘yes’, 내 is ‘mine’, 왜 is ‘why’, 외 is ’excluding/outside’). You can think of these as analogies to English pronounciation quirks, such as night and knight, fishing and phishing, reel and real, and so on.

Syllables

The consonants and vowels are combined to form syllables using a minimum of one each. Some will have an extra consonant at the end. The order for pronouncing syllables is:

1. The leading consonant
2. The vowel
3. The second consonant, if present

It’s easier to explain with examples, so let’s start with something simple.

One consonant + vowel

All syllables follow the leftmost figure in shape; a consonant to the left and a vowel to the right. The vowel can extend to below the consonant, as seen in the second and fourth characters.

The first word is 비, which means ‘rain’. The consonant is ㅂ (b), and the vowel is ㅣ (i/ee), so you pronounce this syllable as ‘bi/bee’.

The second word is 뭐, which means ‘what’. The consonant is ㅁ (m), and the vowel is ㅝ (wuh), so you read this syllable as ‘mwuh’.

The third word is 셔, which means ‘sour’. The consonant is ㅅ (s), and the vowel is ㅕ (yuh). But trying to pronounce ‘syuh’ is awkward, so this is one of those syllables where ㅅ (s) becomes (sh). Therefore, you read this syllable as ‘shyuh’, which is much easier.

The fourth word is 쏴, which means ’to shoot’ (as in a gun), or the sound effect for flowing heavy water. The consonant is ㅆ (ss), and the vowel is ㅘ (wa), so this is read as ‘sswa’ or ‘sswah’.

Below is a table where ㅅ becomes ‘sh’ instead of ’s’. The pronounciation change also applies to ㅆ. Any ㅅ/ㅆ + vowel combination not here is pronounced as ’s/ss’. As a simple rule, if it’s easier to pronounce ㅅ with ‘sh’ instead of ’s’, it’s probably the former.

As ’s’ and ‘sh’ are in complimentary distribution (they are mutually exclusive), sounds like ‘si’ or ‘sya’ do not exist.

Pseudo-consonant ㅇ

When a syllable starts with ㅇ, ignore it and read directly from the vowel. Syllables must start with a consonant, so pure vowel sounds are also accompanied with a consonant. That’s the purpose of ㅇ; hence the ‘pseudo-consonant’ notation. You will never see ㅏ in text, it’ll always be 아.

First is 야. Since the ㅇ is ignored, this would just be read as ㅑ, so ‘ya’ or ‘yah’.

Second is 여. This would just be read as ㅕ, so ‘yuh’.

The pattern should be clear. Just ignore the ㅇ, it’s only there so that you can directly pronounce the vowels. Therefore, the earlier vowel tables can only be expressed when you attach ㅇ before them.

Consonants as endings

A lot of syllables will end in a consonant. They are pronounced slightly different to the consonant table above, this is to make speaking more natural. Below is a table to show the differences.

The double consonants not shown here (ㄸ,ㅃ,ㅉ) are not used as ending consonants. Don’t try to memorize these too hard, you’ll naturally find yourself changing your pronounciation.

Two consonants + vowel

These syllables use consonants at the end, so remember to use their ending pronounciations. The second consonant is written below the the first, with a vowel sandwiched if it extends below the first consonant.

The first syllable is 약, which means ‘medicine’. The first consonant is ㅇ (o), the vowel is ㅑ (ya, yah), and the second consonant is ㄱ (soft k). Remember from the pseudo-consonant section, ㅇ is the consonant so you ignore it and read from the vowel. So this word is pronounced as yah-k → yahk, with a soft k.

The second syllable is 공, which means ‘ball’. The leading consonant is ㄱ (g), the vowel is ㅗ (oh), and the ending consonant is ㅇ, but pronounced as an ’ng’ because ㅇ is ending the syllable. Therefore, this syllable is pronounced gong/gohng. Don’t Englishify it to ‘gong’.

The third syllable is 철, which means ‘iron’. The leading consonant is ㅊ (ch), the vowel is ㅓ (uh), and the ending consonant is ㄹ (l). The syllable is pronounced chul or chuhl.

The fourth is 밥, which means food or rice. The leading consonant is ㅂ (b), the vowel is ㅏ(a, ah), and the ending consonant is ㅂ again. The pronounciation is bab/bahb.

The last character is 딲, which doesn’t mean anything on its own. The leading consonant is ㄸ (dd/tt), the vowel is ㅏ (ah), and the ending consonant is ㄲ (gg/kk), so the syllable is pronounced as ‘ddakk’. Make sure to emphasize the hard ‘dd’ and ‘kk’.

Double ending consonants

The last type of syllable has two ending consonants. These are used exclusively as ending consonants, you will never see them start syllables. These are pronounced a bit softer, like the ending consonants above. For example, you might think the word ‘dart’ might translate to 닱. However, the ‘rt’ would sound very soft and this would sound closer to ‘daht’. The official translation would be 다트 (da-teuh).

Liaison effect

This effect isn’t significant when you’re reading slowly but becomes relevant as you become moderately proficient. When the pronounciation of a syllable can be replicated with slightly different characters, confusion can arise.

• 없어 (to not have) (uhbs-uh) → 업서 (not a real word) (ub-suh)
• 축하 (congrats) (chook-hah) → 추카 (not a real word) (choo-kah)
• 바다 (ocean) (ba-dah) ↔ 받아 (imperative form of “to receive”) (bad-ah)
• 열어 (imperative form of “to open”) (yul-uh) ↔ 여러 (many/multiple) (yuh-luh)
• 적어 (imperative form of “to write”/little) (jug-uh) ↔ 저거 (that) (juh-guh)
• 안에 (inside of) (ahn-eh) ↔ 아내 (wife) (ah-neh)

You’ll be able to determine what was said through context or building experience. To determine which spelling is the correct one, the easiest trick is to pronounce each syllable of a word one-by-one.

축하합니다

Hopefully this article was comprehensive enough to get you started. If reading Korean really is easy, you’ll be able to ditch Romanization rather soon. Grammar is a much bigger challenge that English speakers tend to struggle with. If you read this and are actually trying to learn the language, good luck.

여러분, 힘내세요. 가나다 외우기가 가장 쉬운 부분입니다.