Learning Hangeul

Now that I have been here almost a month I am officially starting to learn Korean. I am starting with the alphabet which is called Hangeul. It's made up of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Here's what the Hangeul letters look like. To the right of each Korean letter is what it sounds like.

Consonants

ㄱ g, k ㅂ b, p ㅋ k ㄴ n ㅅ s ㅌ t ㄷ d, t ㅇ ng, silent ㅍ p ㄹ r, l ㅈ j ㅎ h ㅁ m ㅊ ch

Vowels

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

Hangeul is written in syllabic units of 2, 3, or 4 letters. It is written from left to right and then up to down. So when you see something written in Hangeul, you read it by reading each character left to right across the top and then left to right across the bottom before moving on to the next character. Here is a word written in Hangeul:

That word, pronounced Han-guk-eo, means "Korean". To hear what the Korean alphabet letters sound like, here is a very short little video clip that demonstrates the sound each letter makes. Korean Alphabet Video