Learning Korean 한국어 - Lesson 2

March 03, 2014

Lesson 2

Welcome back! This is the 2nd lesson of "Learn to read, write and pronounce Korean". In the previous lesson, you already learned 4 letters: ㅂ, ㅏ, ㄴ and O. In this lesson, you will learn 4 new ones and combined with the ones you learned earlier they will open up quite a few Korean words to you.

The first new letter is Mieum:

ㅁ

This is pronounced just like a regular English m. Be careful not to confuse its appearance with 'O', which has rounded corners rather than straight.

As an exercise, try to read the following Korean words that contain the letter Mieum..

마나마 capital city of Bahrain

ma-na-ma

안남 name of Vietnam before it became 'Vietnam'

an-nam

암만 capital city of Jordan

am-man

Are the As boring you yet? It's time to learn another vowel.

ㅣ

This is the vowel i. It is pronounced like the ee in meet. The Korean letter looks much like the English letter I, so it's easy to remember. It also looks like the Korean letter for a, except that the dash to the right is missing. You will notice that a lot of Korean vowels are formed on the basis of one or two vertical lines with dashes attached to them, so memorise them well and don't get confused.

Practise reading:

나미비아 country in Africa

na-mi-bi-a

빈 capital city of Austria

Vienna (Wien)

Now for a very important letter that will unlock lots of words to you: Rieul

ㄹ

This letter is pronounced like r or l, typically somewhere in between in true Asian fashion. This is Rieul. According to the official Korean romanisation system, it is always transliterated as l.

Here are lots of words to practise with:

바바라 personal name

ba-ba-ra

이란 country that has been in the news much lately

i-ran

리마 capital of Peru

li-ma

마닐라 capital of the Philippines

ma-nil-la

말리 country in Africa

mal-li

릴 big city in France

lil lille

마일 distance measurement

ma-il mile

리비아 country on the North coast of Africa

li-bi-a libya

The last letter for this lesson shall be Giyeok:

ㄱ

This letter is pronounced like g or k. Listen to Giyeok. Be careful not to confuse it with ㄴ. When this letter is combined with a vowel such as a or i, it changes shape slightly. See the syllable gi for instance: 기.

Words for practise:

가나 country in Western Africa

ga-na Ghana

기니 another country in Western Africa

gi-ni guena

리가 capital of Latvia

ri-ga

알바니아 country in the Balkans

al-ba-ni-a

가이아나 country in South America

ga-i-a-na Guyana

감비아 country almost enclosed by Senegal

gam-bi-a

Did you have any major difficulty reading the practise words for this lesson? No? Very good! You have now learned 8 Korean letters already and the rest won't be difficult either. Feel free to continue with the next lesson.

Source: www.learnlangs.com