Review the basic vowels and consonants
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| 안녕하세요 여러분. Koreanclass101.com 하나하나 한글시리즈의 에이미입니다. Hi, everybody! I’m Amy and welcome to Hana Hana Hangul on KoreanClass101.com - The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Hangul, the Korean alphabet. |
| You just made it to an important milestone: you now know all of the characters in written Korean. The rules for combining them and quirks about the pronunciation is the focus of future lessons, but for now, let’s take a break from new things and make sure you’ve got a solid foundation to build on! |
| There are a few Korean consonants that sound different depending on their location in the word. Let’s review those consonants! |
| Let's talk about the consonant 기역 first. We learned that it sounds like g of green. But if the consonant ㄱ is located at the beginning of a word, it sounds more like ㅋ(크). |
| Take a look at an example. |
| Do you remember the verb 가요(gayo) meaning 'I go'? |
| In this word, ㄱ is located at the beginning of the word, so it’s not pronounced “gayo”, it’s 카요(kayo). It’s almost the same as the consonant ㅋ. |
| However, when 기역 is located in the middle of words, it sounds almost exactly like the G of Green. Let's listen to the example. 누가/ 누.. 가.. In this word, 기역 is located in the middle of the word, so it sounds softer. |
| You can find the same pronunciation rules in the consonants ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ and ㄹ. Hard sound at the beginning of words, soft sound in the middle. |
| Let's check the examples for each consonant. |
| 다리 (dari / bridge) and 수도 (sudo / capital) |
| 다리...수도...다리...수도... |
| 바지 (baji / pants) and 바보 (babo / fool) |
| 바지...바보...바지...바보... |
| 지구 (jigu / earth) and 휴지 (hyuji / toilet paper) |
| 지구...휴지...지구...휴지... |
| 라디오 (radio / radio) and 도로 (doro / streets) |
| 라디오...도로...라디오...도로... |
| And we’ll return to 기역 once more... |
| 가요 (gayo / I go ) and 누가(nuga / who) |
| 가요...누가...가요...누가... |
| This difference is tricky, but it will really help your pronunciation sound natural! |
| Do you know what an aspirated consonant is? The fact is, Korean is full of them...and you already know them! An aspirated sound is one that’s pronounced with a puff of breath. I'll give you a tip to say the aspirated consonants you already know correctly. |
| Let’s look at 흐 and 으. When you say 흐, you can feel that you are breathing out the the strong burst of air. That’s because this sound is aspirated. 으 is unaspirated -- “으” -- nothing comes out! |
| Consonants ㄱ, ㅈ, ㄷ, and ㅂ are all unaspirated, but they each have a pair of aspired sounds. |
| If you read ㄱ as you say ㅎ -- that is, aspirated -- “ㅋ” you can hear that the sound becomes a stronger, K sound. That's the pronunciation of ㅋ, the first aspirated consonant. |
| Let's say ㅎ first. Think about how much air is coming out of your mouth when you do this. Then say ㄱ with the same amount of air. 흐. 크. 흐. 크. Great job! |
| Let's practice with a word. 크기. (keugi / size) 크.기. 크기. |
| You can find the same pronunciation rule in the other consonants. |
| 자 plus 하 equals 차 |
| 차지 |
| 다 plus 하 equals 타 |
| 타다 |
| 부 plus 후 equals 푸 |
| 포부 |
| One last point today! |
| Here is the chart of 140 sound combinations you can recognize by this point. You should spend some time with this chart before moving on to the next lesson. But for now, I’m going to give you a pop quiz! Fifteen questions -- I show you a character and you tell me how to read it. Try to answer within three seconds. Ready? |
| 1. 도 |
| 2. 쿄 |
| 3. 뮤 |
| 4. 뱌 |
| 5. 스 |
| 6. 퓨 |
| 7. 하 |
| 8. 탸 |
| 9. 라 |
| 10. 여 |
| 11. 주 |
| 12. 처 |
| 13. 기 |
| 14. 려 |
| 15. 누 |
| How did you do? |
| If you’re having a hard time remembering some of the characters, don’t forget to practice writing them too! Get some graph paper and try to write all 140 combinations of consonant and vowel from memory. There may be some gaps in what you’re able to remember at first, but with this technique you can isolate the problems and keep trying until you’re able to write them all. And once you can write the characters, reading will become no problem at all! |
| Already an expert at these characters? Great! There’s plenty more to learn and we’re going to get into it in the very next lesson. See you on the next Hana Hana Hangul! 여러분 다음에 또 만나요. |
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