Govorov's Korean Lessons

Chapter I: Vowels and Consonants

Take the word "철창" for example. It is formed from two indivisual "Chunks" of '철' and '창', and each are from the two indivisual letter, of 'ㅊ', 'ㅓ', 'ㄹ', 'ㅊ', 'ㅏ', and 'ㅇ'. What? This doesn't make any sense to you? That's OK. I'll explain.

Each word has three parts: Initials, Vowels and Finals. Initials and Finals are from the same chart of letters, and Vowels deserve a different list of letters, because they're special. So let's get back to the chunk of "철". The Initials, going at the top left of the letter, is 'ㅊ'. The Vowels, going at the right of the Initials, is in this case, 'ㅓ'. And the Finals, at the bottom of the Initial-Vowel pair is 'ㄹ'. And the weird part is, that the vowel part sometimes doesn't exist, like in the case of the chunk '나', there are only Initials and Vowels, of 'ㄴ' and 'ㅏ', forming the word '나'. I hope this makes sence. Initials and Finals both share the same Consanant list.

Here is the full list of Consanants from this website

So how do you pronounce the Korean language? Simple. Add all the letters from that list above, smash it together, and there you go. Example: Let's look at the word "철창". First chunk- 철. The initial's pronounciation is CH, the vowel's pronounciation is eo, and the final's pronounciation is R/L. So the chunk 철 is pronounced CHEOL: Cheol.

The second chunk: 창. Initial-letter ㅊ is pronounced CH, vowel-letter ㅏ is pronounced a, and the final letter which is ㅇ is pronounced ng. So, the chunk 창 is pronounced CHANG. Chang!

So, the word 철창, is pronounced CheolChang. If the chunk has no finals, than ignore it.

Pop quiz of the day: Try to pronounce the word 전쟁. Helpful hint-Two vowels added(like ㅏ+ㅣ=ㅐ), is pronounced like the two adding vowels smashed together. (a+e=Ae)