A language written for people who could not read
For most of Korea's history, Korean was a spoken language with no writing of its own. What people wrote was Chinese — a foreign script, borrowed to record a language it did not fit, and learnable only by those with years to spend on it. Ordinary Koreans could speak perfectly well and read nothing at all.
In 1443, King Sejong set out to fix that, and in 1446 the new alphabet was published as the Hunminjeongeum — "the correct sounds for the instruction of the people." The introduction says plainly what it was for: ordinary people had things they wanted to put into words and no way to write them down.
It did not arrive to applause. Senior scholars at court petitioned against it in 1444, on the grounds that abandoning Chinese characters would make Korea look barbarous to its neighbours. For centuries the alphabet was dismissed as eonmun, the vernacular script — what women and children used. It only became the national writing system in earnest in the 20th century, and the name it goes by now, 한글 (hangeul), was coined around 1912 by the linguist Ju Si-gyeong. South Korea still marks the 1446 publication with a public holiday every 9 October.
Why it is so easy to learn
Hangul is not a set of symbols you memorise one by one. It was designed, deliberately and from scratch, and the design is the reason it takes an afternoon rather than a year.
The consonants are drawn as pictures of your own mouth making the sound. ㄱ is the back of the tongue rising towards the soft palate; ㄴ is the tongue tip touching the ridge behind your teeth; ㅁ is the shape of the lips; ㅅ a tooth; ㅇ the open throat. Sounds made in the same place share a shape, with a stroke added for more breath: ㄱ becomes ㅋ, ㄴ becomes ㄷ then ㅌ.
The vowels are built from three strokes: a dot for the sun, a horizontal line for the flat earth, a vertical line for a standing person. Combine them and you get ㅏ ㅓ ㅗ ㅜ and the rest.
There are 24 letters. They are not written in a line like English but stacked into square syllable blocks — 한 is ㅎ + ㅏ + ㄴ — so a Korean word takes up about as much space as a Chinese one while still spelling out every sound. The 1446 commentary claimed a clever man could learn it in a morning. That is a boast, but not a wild one.
What Korean feels like coming from English
Three things surprise people, and none of them are the alphabet:
- The verb goes last. "I ate rice at home" comes out as I at home rice ate. You have to hear a Korean sentence to the end before you know what happened in it.
- Small words mark the job each word is doing. Instead of relying on word order, Korean tags the subject, the object and the topic with particles. Once you spot them, sentences stop looking like a wall.
- Politeness is built into the grammar. The verb ending changes depending on who you are speaking to. The -요 ending covers almost everything a traveller needs and is never rude.
The ten phrases worth learning first
Learn these and you can be polite, order food, buy something, and find a toilet. That covers most days.
- 안녕하세요 (annyeonghaseyo) — Hello. Any time of day, to anyone. A small nod goes with it.
- 감사합니다 (gamsahamnida) — Thank you. Safe with everyone, everywhere.
- 죄송합니다 (joesonghamnida) — I'm sorry. For when you have actually done something.
- 실례합니다 (sillyehamnida) — Excuse me. For getting attention or squeezing past. Not an apology.
- 네 / 아니요 (ne / aniyo) — Yes / no.
- 얼마예요? (eolmayeyo?) — How much is it?
- 이거 주세요 (igeo juseyo) — This one, please. Point as you say it.
- 여기요! (yeogiyo!) — Over here. This is how you call a server in Korea. Nobody comes to the table unless you do, and it is not rude.
- 화장실이 어디예요? (hwajangsiri eodiyeyo?) — Where is the toilet?
- 안녕히 계세요 / 안녕히 가세요 (annyeonghi gyeseyo / annyeonghi gaseyo) — Goodbye. The first is said to whoever is staying, the second to whoever is leaving. Mix them up and you will still be understood.
One number to know rather than learn: prices are counted in units of 만 (man), ten thousand. So 50,000 won is spoken as oman-won, five-man-won, not fifty thousand. And in an emergency, 112 is the police and 119 is fire and ambulance, from any phone.
Two mistakes to avoid when reading the romanisation
- eo is one vowel, not two. It is the "u" in cut — so eolmayeyo starts like "ul", not "ee-oh". This is the single most common mispronunciation.
- eu is flat and unrounded, closer to the "oo" in book with your lips relaxed. It is not the French eu.
This is also the best argument for learning the alphabet: romanisation is a rough translation of sounds English does not have, and the moment you can read 한글 you stop guessing.
Read Korean in an afternoon — free
The four beginner levels at the top of this page are free, and they are the whole job: the alphabet, the sound rules that explain why spoken Korean does not match the spelling, the numbers, the present tense, the past and future, and how to join two thoughts into one sentence. Every word and sentence in them is read aloud on this site, so you hear a Korean voice rather than guess from the spelling.
Start with Level 1. It is the afternoon Sejong was talking about.
When phrases stop being enough
The four intermediate levels below pick up where the beginner books end — the three levels of politeness and when each is right, how to say you want, can, must or may do something, the three different words for because, and how to describe things and repeat what someone else said. That is the point where you stop reciting phrases and start making your own sentences.
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