| Seol: 안녕하세요. 윤설입니다. |
| Keith: Keith here. Now today we have a great video for all of you. This video is designed to help you to learn how to write and read Korean. Writing Korean is so easy, right, Seol? |
| Seol: Yeah why not. |
| Keith: It’s so easy to learn that one shouldn’t have to rely on Romanization. Romanization isn’t exactly the easiest thing to read or write because some spellings can change and they get kind of long. It changes all the time according to circumstances and also a lot of the pronunciations can be misleading too. |
| Seol: Yeah that is true. It’s best to learn how to read and how to write Korean from the beginning. 한국어 will become really easier. |
| Keith: That’s right and for those of you that don’t know, 한국어 is |
| Seol: Korean. |
| Keith: Yeah Korean and that’s why in this video, we are all going to learn how to write Korean. All right, let’s get started. The first point we want to make today is basically Korean is written by combining consonants and vowels. Seol, how many consonants are there? |
| Seol: There are 14 basic consonants. |
| Keith: Yeah we are not going to give you the sound value for these consonants right now because in reality, the names of these consonants don’t do justice to their actual sound value but if you are interested, please check out KoreanClass101.com and click on the reference materials. There we have a couple of videos to show you the stroke order and the names of these consonants and vowels. Seol, how easy do you think it is to write these consonants? |
| Seol: It’s really easy. It might take around 10 minutes. |
| Keith: That’s right. It’s so easy, I think so too. So I don’t think anybody out there is going to have a problem getting started with the consonants. All right, so let’s move on to the vowels. Seol, how many vowels are there? |
| Seol: There are ten basic vowels. |
| Keith: Yeah ten very basic vowels and you thought the consonants were easy? Man, the vowels are so easy to write. All of these vowels have at least one vertical or one horizontal line and they have 1, 2, or no short lines coming out of them. So it’s really, really easy to write these. All right, with the vowels we are not going to give you any sound values yet because we need at least one consonant and one vowel to make a sound. And that’s what we are going to focus on today, the combination of one consonant and one vowel. |
| Seol: Yeah it’s the easiest and the most basic way to write something in Korean. |
| Keith: All right, now let’s move on. Korean is basically written in squares. Each square makes one syllable. There can be one consonant, one vowel or two consonants |
| Seol: One vowel. |
| Keith: Or three consonants |
| Seol: Two vowels. |
| Keith: Yeah one consonant |
| Seol: Three vowels. |
| Keith: Yeah and there is a few more combinations but the sound that the squares make is always… |
| Seol: One syllable. |
| Keith: One syllable. And because these squares all represent one syllable, these squares are called syllabic blocks. Let’s take a look at the word for Korean. |
| Seol: 한 |
| Keith: That’s one block. |
| Seol: One syllable. |
| Keith: 국 |
| Seol: That’s one block too.. |
| Keith: Yeah and one syllable. |
| Seol: 어 |
| Keith: That’s one block and one syllable. Three blocks? |
| Seol: Three syllables. |
| Keith: Yes. So simple. |
| Seol: It’s very simple. |
| Keith: All right, let’s get started by combining each of the consonants with one vowel. We have our first consonant. Seol, the name of our first consonant is |
| Seol: 기역 |
| Keith: The sound value it has is something like a cross between an English G and a K and now our first vowel. |
| Seol: ㅏ |
| Keith: Yeah this is very similar to the English A. Put these two together and it’s |
| Seol: 가 |
| Keith: Notice here how the consonant is on the left and the vowel is on the right. This should always happen whenever you have one consonant and one vertical vowel. So you have to take note of the positioning of the consonants and the positioning of the vowels. All right, now the next consonant. This consonant sounds much like the English N and what’s the name of this consonant? |
| Seol: 니은 |
| Keith: Once again the names of these consonants don’t do justice to the sound values. So we are not going to give you the names of all these consonants and once again, it’s the same vowel we had in our last syllabic block. So we are going to make this sound for you. |
| Seol: 나 |
| Keith: All right. So let’s go a little faster with these. Try to pay attention to the stroke orders. Generally speaking, the stroke order for these is |
| Seol: Top to bottom. |
| Keith: And left to right. |
| Seol: 다, 라, 마, 바, 사, 아... |
| Keith: Over here, we are going to stop for a second. This one, we are going to go into a little more detail later but for now, just know that this circle like consonant we have here has no sound value, okay. Let’s finish the rest up. |
| Seol: 자, 차, 카, 타, 파, 하. |
| Keith: All right that was real easy, wasn’t it, Seol? |
| Seol: It’s really easy. |
| Keith: Yeah the consonant on the left, the vowel on the right. So this whole time, we’ve only been working with one vowel. So now, we are going to show you how to write the other vowels. |
| Seol: I love vowels because they are so simple. |
| Keith: Yeah but we can’t just have one vowel, can we? |
| Seol: Yeah we need more vowels. |
| Keith: Yeah like we said before, we need at least one consonant and one vowel to make a sound. And that’s where this consonant comes into play. Seol, what’s the name of this consonant? |
| Seol: 이응. |
| Keith: Yeah but here it has no sound value. If we just want the sound of the vowel, we still need the consonant. So ㅇ just acts as a placeholder, no sound. It’s just there because we need it to be. Okay let’s move on to the first one. First we have the consonant to the left and now the vowel on the right. All these vowels have at least one long line, either vertical or horizontal. So here it’s one long vertical line going from top to bottom and now one short line budding out left to right. |
| Seol: 아. |
| Keith: Next we have a really cool trick to show you. First we have ㅇ again. |
| Seol: No sound. |
| Keith: We have to wait for the vowel. ㅏ. Hey we just did this. |
| Seol: Just wait a second and see. |
| Keith: All right. Notice here how it looks almost exactly the same as the last vowel but this time, it has two short lines coming out of it instead of one. So here instead of 아 we get |
| Seol: 야. It’s kind of like adding a Y sound in English. |
| Keith: Great way to explain it. It’s almost the same sound as the vowel with one line but now with the second line, we get a Y sound value 아,야. All right next, ㅇ to the left, vowel to the right. |
| Seol: 어. |
| Keith: And once again, we are going to go with that really cool trick that we did. Again we have ㅇ to the left and now we have |
| Seol: 여. |
| Keith: To the right. All right, let’s move on to the next one. Once again we have ㅇ and now we have ㅗ. All right, let’s stop here a second. The whole time, we had the consonants on the left and the vowel on the right. Seol, what’s going on here? |
| Seol: The consonant is on top and the vowel is on the bottom. |
| Keith: Yeah this happens because the vowel has a long horizontal line. All of the vowels that have a long, horizontal line go to the bottom. Okay we are going to move a little quicker. So watch the rest of the vowels and be sure to see where they are placed. |
| Seol: 요, 우, 유, 으, 이. |
| Keith: Hey did you catch the last one? The vowel, it’s on the right of the consonant because |
| Seol: It has a low vertical line. |
| Keith: Seol, you are the best. |
| Seol: Thank you. |
| Keith: All right, I think that’s going to do it. Be sure to stop by KoreanClass101.com, there we have a few more how to write 한글 videos. Stop by and be sure to check it out. |
| Seol: 안녕. |
| Keith: See you. |
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