The Korean Alphabet (Hangul): A Complete Beginner’s Chart

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Want to read the Korean alphabet, the whole of Hangul, by the end of the day?

You really can. In this article I'll walk you through every letter of the Korean alphabet: the consonants, the vowels, how they snap together into those neat little syllable blocks, and the handful of pronunciation quirks worth knowing early. By the end you'll be sounding out real Korean words instead of staring at them.

Here's the reassurance to start you off. Of all the writing systems I've learned, Hangul is the friendliest. It isn't a wall of thousands of characters like Chinese, and it isn't a sprawling tangle of exceptions. It's a small, tidy, gloriously logical alphabet that was deliberately engineered to be easy. There's a famous old line about it: a clever person can learn Hangul in a single morning, and even someone struggling will have it within ten days. That's not marketing. It's roughly true, and it's the reason I'm telling you to aim for “today”.

I've sat where you're sitting. I took on a three-month Korean mission and went from zero to holding a real conversation in the language. Here's the unscripted chat I recorded at the end of it, so you know the tips below come from someone who has actually done the work rather than just written about it:

By the way, the Korean alphabet has a name of its own: 한글 (Hangul), which simply means “Korean script”. Let's learn it.

Why Hangul Is So Easy to Learn (a Quick Story)

Most alphabets just sort of happened, drifting into shape over centuries. Hangul didn't. It was invented, on purpose, by one person with a clear goal.

Back in 1443, Korea wrote using Chinese characters, which took years of study to master and effectively locked reading and writing away from ordinary people. King Sejong the Great thought that was unfair. So he designed a brand-new alphabet simple enough for anyone to pick up, and in 1446 he published it in a document called the Hunminjeongeum, “The Proper Sounds for the Instruction of the People”.

Here's the clever bit, and the part that makes Hangul so quick to learn. The basic consonant shapes are little diagrams of your own mouth. ㄱ is the back of your tongue rising to block your throat for a g. ㄴ is the tongue tapping behind your teeth for an n. ㅁ is the square of your closed lips for an m. The shapes aren't random squiggles you have to memorise cold, they're pictures of how the sound is made. That's why it sticks so fast.

So when you feel a wobble of “I'll never learn a foreign alphabet”, remember: this one was built, from scratch, specifically so that you could.

The Korean Consonants

There are 14 basic consonants in Hangul. Here they are with their romanisation (I'm using the standard Revised Romanization throughout) and a pronunciation note for each.

One thing to flag before the table: several consonants have two romanised sounds, like ㄱ being g/k. That's because they soften at the start of a syllable and harden at the end. ㄱ is closer to g in “go” when it kicks off a word, and closer to a clipped k when it lands at the end. Don't overthink it yet, just know that's why two letters appear.

Letter	Name	Romanisation	Pronunciation note
ㄱ	giyeok	g / k	g in “go” (a k at the end of a syllable)
ㄴ	nieun	n	n in “now”
ㄷ	digeut	d / t	d in “dog” (a t at the end)
ㄹ	rieul	r / l	a soft, flicked r between vowels; an l at the end
ㅁ	mieum	m	m in “mom”
ㅂ	bieup	b / p	b in “boy” (a p at the end)
ㅅ	siot	s / t	s in “see” (a soft t at the end)
ㅇ	ieung	silent / ng	silent at the start of a syllable; ng (as in “sing”) at the end
ㅈ	jieut	j	j in “jump”
ㅊ	chieut	ch	ch in “church”, with a puff of air
ㅋ	kieuk	k	a strongly aspirated k, like “kite” with extra breath
ㅌ	tieut	t	a strongly aspirated t, like “top” with extra breath
ㅍ	pieup	p	a strongly aspirated p, like “pot” with extra breath
ㅎ	hieut	h	h in “hello”

Two of these deserve a closer look, because they trip up nearly everyone:

• ㅇ (ieung) is the chameleon of the alphabet. At the start of a syllable it makes no sound at all, it's just a placeholder so that a vowel has something to sit next to (Korean never writes a vowel on its own). At the end of a syllable it becomes the ng sound. So in 앙 (ang) the first ㅇ is silent and the last ㅇ is the ng.
• ㄹ (rieul) lives somewhere between English r and l. Between two vowels it's a quick flick of the tongue, close to the r in the Spanish “pero”; at the end of a syllable it relaxes into an l. One letter, two flavours, and your ear will sort them out faster than your brain will.

The 5 Double Consonants

On top of the basic 14, Hangul has 5 “double” or tense consonants, written by doubling a basic letter. These are pronounced harder and tighter than their single versions, with the throat slightly tensed and no puff of air. Think of the difference between a relaxed b and a sharp, clipped one.

Letter	Romanisation	Built from	Pronunciation note
ㄲ	kk	ㄱ + ㄱ	a tense, clipped k, like the ck in “sticker”
ㄸ	tt	ㄷ + ㄷ	a tense t, sharper than ㄷ
ㅃ	pp	ㅂ + ㅂ	a tense p, sharper than ㅂ
ㅆ	ss	ㅅ + ㅅ	a tense, hissed s
ㅉ	jj	ㅈ + ㅈ	a tense j, almost a “tz”

Don't sweat the tense consonants on day one. Learn the basic 14 first, get reading, and let these slot in once your ear is warmed up.

The Korean Vowels

There are 10 basic vowels in Hangul, and they're beautifully systematic. Look closely and you'll spot a pattern: adding a second little stroke turns a vowel into its “y” version. ㅏ (a) becomes ㅑ (ya); ㅗ (o) becomes ㅛ (yo). Learn five sounds and you've half-learned the other five for free.

Letter	Romanisation	Pronunciation note
ㅏ	a	a in “father”
ㅑ	ya	ya in “yacht”
ㅓ	eo	u in “but” (an open “uh”)
ㅕ	yeo	yu in “young”
ㅗ	o	o in “go”
ㅛ	yo	yo in “yoga”
ㅜ	u	oo in “moon”
ㅠ	yu	you
ㅡ	eu	a tight “uh” with lips spread, no English twin
ㅣ	i	ee in “see”

The two to watch are ㅓ (eo) and ㅡ (eu), because their romanisation looks stranger than the sounds actually are. ㅓ is just the “uh” in “but”. ㅡ is a tight, smiling “uh”, lips pulled wide as if you're about to say “ee” but humming instead. Hear them a couple of times from a native speaker and they'll click.

Key Compound Vowels

Korean also has a set of compound vowels, made by combining the basic ones. You don't need to drill every last one to start reading, but these are the ones you'll genuinely meet in everyday words:

Letter	Romanisation	Pronunciation note
ㅐ	ae	e in “bed”
ㅔ	e	e in “bed” (in modern speech, near-identical to ㅐ)
ㅒ	yae	ya in “yam”
ㅖ	ye	ye in “yes”
ㅘ	wa	wa in “want”
ㅙ	wae	wa in “wax”
ㅚ	oe	we in “wet”
ㅝ	wo	wo in “won”
ㅞ	we	we in “wet”
ㅟ	wi	wi in “win”
ㅢ	ui	a quick “eu” gliding into “ee”

A small mercy here: in modern Korean, ㅐ and ㅔ sound almost identical, and so do ㅙ, ㅚ and ㅞ. Native speakers barely separate them. So if you can't hear the difference, you're not doing it wrong, you're just hearing the language as it's actually spoken.

How Korean Syllable Blocks Work

This is the one idea that makes Korean reading suddenly click, so it's worth slowing down for.

Unlike English, where letters run along in a straight line, Korean stacks its letters into square syllable blocks. Each block is one syllable, and it's built from two or three pieces:

1. An initial consonant (always first)
2. A vowel (always next)
3. An optional final consonant, called a 받침 (batchim, literally “support”)

Every block follows the same logic, and where each letter sits depends only on whether the vowel is a tall, vertical one or a flat, horizontal one. Let's build a few from scratch.

Example 1: 한 (han)

Take three letters: ㅎ (h) + ㅏ (a) + ㄴ (n). Because ㅏ is a tall vertical vowel, the consonant goes on its left, and the final consonant tucks underneath:

ㅎ + ㅏ → 하 (ha), then add ㄴ underneath → 한 (han)

Example 2: 글 (geul)

Now ㄱ (g) + ㅡ (eu) + ㄹ (l). Because ㅡ is a flat horizontal vowel, it sits under the consonant, and the final consonant goes under that:

ㄱ on top, ㅡ beneath it → 그 (geu), then ㄹ underneath → 글 (geul)

Put those two blocks side by side and you've just read 한글 (Hangul), the name of the alphabet itself. You read it block by block, left to right, top to bottom inside each block.

Example 3: 안녕 (annyeong), “hi”

Two blocks this time:

Block 1: ㅇ (silent here) + ㅏ + ㄴ → 안 (an) Block 2: ㄴ + ㅕ + ㅇ (an ng at the end) → 녕 (nyeong)

Read them together and you get 안녕 (annyeong), the everyday Korean “hi”. Notice the silent ㅇ doing its placeholder job at the start of 안, and the same ㅇ becoming an ng at the end of 녕. Same letter, two jobs, exactly as promised.

Once this clicks, reading Korean stops being decoding and starts being reading. You stop spelling out letters and start seeing whole syllables at a glance.

Pronunciation Gotchas Worth Knowing Early

A few things will make more sense if you meet them now rather than being surprised by them later:

• Final consonants get softened. When a consonant lands at the end of a block (as a batchim), it's barely released. A final ㄱ, ㅋ and ㄲ all collapse into the same quiet k sound; final ㄷ, ㅌ, ㅅ, ㅈ and a few others all flatten into a soft t. So the spelling keeps more detail than the sound. This is why ㄱ is romanised g/k: it's a clear g up front and a swallowed k at the back.
• Sounds bleed across blocks. When one syllable ends in a consonant and the next begins with the silent ㅇ, that consonant often hops over to fill it. It's the same thing English does when “an apple” sounds like “a napple”. You'll pick it up by ear.
• Aspiration is real. ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅊ are pronounced with a noticeable puff of air, while ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅈ are not. Hold a hand in front of your mouth: the aspirated ones should move it.

None of these are things to master before you start. They're things to recognise so that when a word sounds slightly different from how it's spelled, you nod instead of panicking.

A Sensible Order for Learning Hangul

Plenty of charts throw all 40-odd letters at you at once. Don't learn it that way. Here's the order I'd actually use:

1. Learn the 10 basic vowels first. They're the simplest shapes and every syllable needs one. Notice the “add a stroke for y” trick and you halve the work.
2. Add the 14 basic consonants. Lean on the mouth-shape logic (ㄴ is the tongue, ㅁ is the lips) and the visual mnemonics that work for you.
3. Practise building blocks straight away. As soon as you know a few consonants and vowels, start stacking them: 가, 나, 다, 라. Reading is a skill, and the only way to build it is to read.
4. Layer in the double consonants and compound vowels. Once the basics flow, these slot in quickly because you already understand the system.
5. Read everything in sight. Korean is wonderfully consistent, so the moment you know the letters you can sound out shop signs, song titles, menus and band names. That instant payoff is what makes Hangul so satisfying to learn.

The single best move you can make is to stop using romanisation as soon as you possibly can. Romanisation is training wheels; it's useful for the first hour and a crutch after that. Read the real letters, even slowly, and you'll improve far faster than someone leaning on the English version.

Where to Go After the Alphabet

Once the letters feel comfortable, the fun really begins, because now you can actually use the language. Build out from here:

• Stock up on vocabulary with our core Korean words you need first.
• Get talking with these practical Korean phrases for your first conversation.
• Learn to count in Korean, which (fair warning) uses two whole number systems.
• Get a feel for how Korean sentences move with our guide to Korean verb conjugation.
• And for a taste of the culture baked into the language, enjoy these Korean proverbs.

Learning to read Hangul is the perfect first win, but the real goal is speaking it with actual people. That's the heart of how I approach every language: not memorising in a corner, but using the language out loud from very early on. If you want a structured way to go from your first Korean words to real conversations, with me coaching you through it alongside a group of fellow learners, that's exactly what we do inside the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp.

For now, though, you've got the whole Korean alphabet in front of you. Pick the vowels, then the consonants, then start stacking them into blocks. Give it the morning King Sejong promised, and you'll be reading Korean before lunch.