Korean belongs to the group of Altaic languages, spoken in the northern area of Asia.

Specifically, Korean is the national language of Korea, but it wasn't always like today. In Korea, for centuries and centuries, documents and papers were written in Chinese but the majority of the population, that was illiterate, couldn't read the difficult Chinese hanja.

This is why, in 1446 AD, King Sejong the Great decided to introduce in Korea a new easy alphabet called "Hangeul" (한글). It includes 40 jamo, characters created out of the shape that the mouth assumes while pronouncing sounds.

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The jamo of the Hangeul can be divided into 4 categories:

• 14 simple consonants

       ㄱ  ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ

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• 5 double consonants

       ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ

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• 14 vocals

       ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ​

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• 7 diphthongs

       ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅢ​

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To learn more about Hangeul, click here to get to its dedicated section.

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The composition of syllables

Basing on the amount of jamo you can put in a syllable, there are three kinds of syllables in Korean.

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• CONSONANT + VOCAL

Every syllable has to start in a consonant in Korean. This is when the jamo ㅇ comes in handy, with its function of zero-sounding character. For example, if you need a syllable to start in "a", with no consonants before the vocal, you will write 아.

Basing on the vocal you need to put in the syllable, the layout of the syllable will change. It'll be split into two horizontal parts when it comes to short vocals (ㅗ, ㅜ, and ㅡ), and it will be split into two vertical parts when it comes to tall vocals (ㅏ, ㅐ, ㅓ, ㅔ, and ㅣ).

Examples: 가, 소, 마, 구, 쁘, 리, 배, 리, 하.

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• CONSONANT + VOCAL + CONSONANT

Once you understand how to build a base syllable (consonant + vocal), you will have no problems understanding how to build this kind of syllable. All you have to do is putting the second consonant under the base syllable, regardless of the kind of vocal. Every consonant can go in this position called "Batchim" (받침).​

Examples: 감, 녕, 반, 엄, 말, 국, 을, 람, 백.

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• CONSONANT + VOCAL + 2 CONSONANTS

This is the trickiest syllable you can find in Korean because you can't actually put every jamo in the batchim position.​ Only 11 combinations are accepted (ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄽ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, ㅄ).

Examples: 삶, 않, 낡, 싫, 값, 읽, 닭, 몫, 덟.

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In conclusion, you'll just have to put one syllable after another and you'll have created a word!

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You can find a downloadable PDF file to review this lesson offline and a Google Forms test to exercise and verify what you learned here below. See you at the next lesson!