Hangul

Date: 5th of June 2013

Time: 3:30 p.m.

Place: UCSI Block B, Computer Lab.

Still remember who is King Sejong? Sound familiar? or Don't remember?

Well, like I mentioned before in my previous post, His Majesty was the one who have created Korean alphabet, called Hangul to replace the Chinese characters. So, in this post, we will be learning Hangul.

 In my opinion, learning Hangul is as easy as learning ABC. If you look at the chart, you will find that every character from A-Y is represented by a Hangul character. For example, the character ‘A’ is represented with ‘ㅏ’ in Hangul character. If you look again, you will find that in Hangul, there isn’t any Hangul character for ‘F’, ‘I’, V’, ‘X’, and ‘Z’. Character ‘C’ is actually ‘ㅊ’ (ch), while character ‘U’ is represented with ‘ㅠ’ (yu). In addition to that, Koreans can’t pronounce’ F’, so P is the replacement for F. So, they pronounce ‘Four’ as ‘Pour’. While B is the replacement for the character ‘V’ and ‘Z’ is ‘J’ to them.

Next, is the attachment of the characters, like how you attach 3 letters, ‘b, o, y’, which becomes the word ‘boy’. Similarly, this is how Hangul characters work too. For instance, to form the ‘han’, we will combine ‘ㅎ’(h), ‘ㅏ’(a), ‘ㄴ’ (n) so it will form 한 (han). You can go through the examples on the right to give you a better idea. It is definitely easy to me since I get to learn it in just one to two days by understanding the chart well as well as doing exercises through websites. “Practice makes perfect” is what you need. 

Look at the chart again, always note that, by just putting ‘ㅏ’, it doesn’t makes a word or character. The correct form is to put a silent (no sound) ‘ㅇ’on the left side, forming the ‘아’, which means A (ah). In addition to that, ‘ㅇ’ can be used as ‘ng’ as well. For example ‘hang’ in Hangul is ‘항’.

Another important information to take note is thatㅏ,ㅣ,ㅕ,ㅑ,ㅐ,ㅔ,ㅓ,ㅒ are always placed at the top right, while ㅛ,ㅗ,ㅠ,ㅜ,ㅡ are always placed at the bottom or middle. Consonants will either be placed at the left top or the most bottom. This is why from the example stated above just now : (한), ‘ㅎ’ and ‘ㄴ’ are placed at the top left and bottom, while ‘ㅏ’ is placed at the right top. 

 

On the other hand, look again at the characters that have ‘y’, likeㅑ(ya), do you find the similarity of that character with this,ㅏ ? There is actually an additional of line onㅏ to form ㅑ. And this goes the same for the other characters that contains ‘y’ too. To form ya, ye, yae, yeo, yu, yo, simply add an additional line on the basic character ofㅏ, ㅔ, ㅐ,ㅓ, ㅜ ,ㅗ and also to put silent ‘ㅇ’ on the left side. But, if you have consonants to put on the left, then the silent ‘ㅇ’ is not needed. For instance, the character ‘hye’ is formed by placing ㅎ,ㅖto form that character, ‘혜’ (hye), while the example given above is '혁' (hyeok). What about ‘W’? It can be formed as well, by combining two vowels, one from the top-right characters, and followed by one from the bottom characters. For instance, ‘Wa’ is formed by putting ‘ㅇ’, ‘ㅗ’,’ㅏ’ to form ‘와’ (wa).

It has been 2 years since the day I started learning Hangul characters. Therefore, all these teachings that I have written above are based on what I can recalled when I learned Hangul at that time and those are just the basic ones. 

The chart on the right shows a better understanding on how to pronounce and to use the Hangul characters correctly. In addition, from that chart as well, there are some characters which I’ve not mentioned because those are the emphasis characters, called as the doubles which I have yet to learn on the differences and reasons for using them instead of the basic ones. 

So, good luck on learning the basic Hangul first! Once you get used to those basic ones, it would be easy for you to understand the emphasis and other arrangements or positions of Hangul characters! =D

I have found this site, which is 'Hangul characters' quiz. So, check how well you are with Hangul ! =D Click on the link below:
http://www.aeriagloris.com/LearnKorean/

It's 4p.m. already!!?? Alright, I have to go back home now. Next week post will be about the National Holidays in South Korea! =D