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    Names of Korean Letters

    Uploaded by

    Akhmad Nurrofik
    This document introduces the names of the Korean letters. It provides the names of all the Korean consonants and vowels, which each have an official name. It notes that while useful, beginners don't need to focus on learning the names and should focus on sounds instead.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Names of Korean Letters

    Uploaded by

    Akhmad Nurrofik
    9 views7 pages
    This document introduces the names of the Korean letters. It provides the names of all the Korean consonants and vowels, which each have an official name. It notes that while useful, beginners don't need to focus on learning the names and should focus on sounds instead.

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

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    This document introduces the names of the Korean letters. It provides the names of all the Korean consonants and vowels, which each have an official name. It notes that while useful, beginners don't need to focus on learning the names and should focus on sounds instead.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    9 views7 pages

    Names of Korean Letters

    Uploaded by

    Akhmad Nurrofik
    This document introduces the names of the Korean letters. It provides the names of all the Korean consonants and vowels, which each have an official name. It notes that while useful, beginners don't need to focus on learning the names and should focus on sounds instead.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 7

    UNIT 0 UNIT 1 UNIT 2 UNIT 3 UNIT 4 UNIT 5 UNIT 6

    UNIT 7 HANJA STORE YOUTUBE OTHER

    MENU

    Names of Korean Letters

    This lesson is also available in Ελληνικά, ‫ کوردی‬and ‫العربية‬

    Introduction

    As a beginner learning Korean, you should focus on learning the


    You can download
    sounds that Korean letters make, and how they fit together to make
    all of the
    syllables. I teach this in Lesson 1, 2 and 3 of Unit 0.
    vocabulary
    introduced in a Unit
    You might also be wondering what the name of each Korean letter
    with our new .csv
    is. That is, how to refer to a specific letter of the Korean alphabet.
    Simple Lists.
    For example, in English, we refer to different letters of the alphabet
    by giving them the following “names:”

    A = “EH”
    “
    B = “BEE”
    C = “SEE”
    D = “DEE”
    E = “EEE”
    F = “EF”
    G = “JI”

    Etc..

    Each Korean letter has its own name, just like how each English
    letter has its own name. The difference is – to my knowledge –
    there is no official way to write the names of the English letters. Is
    “EH” the best way to write the name for the letter “A?” Well, I’m
    Canadian, so it seems correct to me.

    Korean letters do have official names. I will introduce these names


    to you in this lesson.

    I must point out that this is not very important for a beginner to learn.
    In fact, it is not even very important for an advanced learner to learn.
    If you are just learning how to read and write Korean, I highly
    suggest that you focus on the sounds that each letter makes
    instead of learning their names. By no means do you need to
    understand this lesson before you move on to Unit 1: Lesson 1. It
    would be more appropriate for you to come back when you reach
    Unit 4 or 5.

    In English, if you say a word (for example, your last name) and need
    ANALYZING
    to spell it out, it is very common to spell out your name letter-by-
    KOREAN SIGNS
    letter. In Korean, as the pronunciation of letters is more fixed, it is
    more common to instead spell out a word syllable-by-syllable
    instead of letter-by-letter. For example, when my wife says her name
    over the phone, she would very slowly say “ 이 – 슬 – 기,” instead of
    saying the individual letters that make up the syllables.

    That being said, let’s get started.

    SENTENCE
    PRACTICE
    Names of Korean Letters

    DICTATION
    Korean Consonants
    PRACTICE

    In Unit 0: Lesson 1, I present the order of the Korean alphabet. Here


    is the list of consonants that was presented:

    ㄱㄲㄴㄷㄸㄹㅁㅂㅃㅅㅆㅇㅈㅉㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ
    ㄲ ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ and ㅉ), we are left
    If we take out the “double letters” ( ,
    20 SECOND LOOKS
    AT RAW KOREA
    with:

    ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂㅅㅇㅈㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ
    The name of each letter (in the same order as above) is:

    ㄱ: 기역
    ㄴ: 니은
    ㄷ: 디귿
    ㄹ: 리을
    ㅁ: 미음
    ㅂ: 비읍
    ㅅ: 시옷
    ㅇ: 이응
    ㅈ: 지읒
    ㅊ: 치읓
    ㅋ: 키읔
    ㅌ: 티읕
    ㅍ: 피읖
    ㅎ: 히읗
    Except for the letters ㄱ, ㄷ and ㅅ, all of the letters follow a specific
    pattern. Look at the following picture to see how the pattern works:
    Step 1: This structure is always (except for the three exceptions)
    used as the base.
    Step 2: Whichever letter you are naming (in our example, the letter
    ㄴ) gets put in place of “X” in our diagram.
    Step 3: This is the name of the letter.

    The letters ㄱ, ㄷ and ㅅ do not follow this pattern.


    As you learned in Unit 0: Lesson 2, the pronunciation of ㄱ and ㅋ,
    and ㄷ and ㅌ are similar.
    This often causes confusion for people – including Koreans! Korean
    people often assume that the name of ㅋ and ㅌ are respectively:
    ㅋ: 키옄
    ㅌ: 티긑
    (ㅅ doesn’t have a similar sounding consonant like this, so there is no
    confusion here)

    Notice that the letters above follow our regular pattern, and that
    their correct names are:

    ㅋ: 키읔
    ㅌ: 티읕

    Korean Double Consonants

    In the section above, you learned the names of the basic Korean
    consonants. I purposely omitted the explanation of the following
    double consonants:

    ㄲ
    ㄸ
    ㅃ
    ㅆ
    ㅉ
    The word for “pair” or “double” in Korean is 쌍 (from the Hanja
    character 雙). The name of each of the letters above is the name as
    쌍
    their respective single-letter names, but with “ ” said before it. For
    example:

    ㄲ: 쌍기역
    ㄸ: 쌍디귿
    ㅃ: 쌍비읍
    ㅆ: 쌍시옷
    ㅉ: 쌍지읒
    Korean Vowels

    Korean vowels don’t really have “names.” The “name” of a Korean


    vowel is the same as each vowel’s respective pronunciation with the
    silent consonant ㅇ used before it.
    If you listen to the pronunciation of each, that would be the “name”
    that it would be referred to. It is very rare to have to refer to one of
    these vowels by its name.

    ㅏ=아
    ㅐ=애
    ㅑ=야
    ㅒ=얘
    ㅓ=어
    ㅔ=에
    ㅕ=여
    ㅖ=예
    ㅗ=오
    ㅘ=와
    ㅙ=왜
    ㅚ=외
    ㅛ=요
    ㅜ=우
    ㅝ=워
    ㅞ=웨
    ㅟ=위
    ㅠ=유
    ㅡ=으
    ㅢ 의
    ㅢ=의
    ㅣ=이
    Again, it is rare to refer to these vowels by name. However, it is
    common to distinguish between vowels that sound similar by
    breaking them into their respective components. The most common
    case of this is when distinguishing between ㅐ and ㅔ. For example,
    if somebody said their name was “ 헤진” and you had to write it
    down, you wouldn’t know to write down “해진,” “헤진” or “혜진.” In this
    case, it would be necessary for you to distinguish between ㅐ, ㅔ and
    예. Again, you can do this by breaking the vowel into its component
    vowels.

    For example:

    To refer to ㅐ, you can say “아이.”


    To refer to ㅔ, you can say “어이.”
    To refer to ㅖ, you can say “여이.”

    Note that ㅐ and ㅔ officially sound different, but almost nobody


    makes the distinction.

    ㅖ is notably different, but when preceded by a consonant sometimes


    the pronunciation is slurred to sound similar to ㅐ or ㅔ.

    ㅒ (which would also sound similar), but this


    I purposely didn’t include
    vowel is much less common and the name “햬진” doesn’t exist.
    However, 해진, 헤진 and 혜진 are all possible.

    The similarity in pronunciation of ㅐ and ㅔ often causes confusion,


    even for native Korean speakers. There are many words whose
    spelling is exactly the same except for a difference in ㅐ or ㅔ. For
    example:

    결재하다 = to approve
    결제하다 = to pay for
    When writing these words, they might tell themselves “Ah, I can’t
    remember if it is 아이 or 어이.”
    Besides distinguishing ㅐ and ㅔ (and sometimes ㅖ), it is rare to
    have to spell out the component parts of a different vowel.
    That’s it for this lesson!

    Click here to go back to the Unit 0 main page.

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