The Alphabet—한글 (Hangeul)

HOW MANY LETTERS?

The hardest thing for me when I started learning Hangeul was finding the complete alphabet. You would think it would be easy, with just one answer but there are many different accountings (24, 27, 38, 40, 42 are all common answers). If you want to learn all the characters . . .

THE COMPLETE ANSWER is 45!

14 Consonants, 5 Double Consonants, 14 Vowels, 6 what I call “W’ Vowels, and 2 unique vowels.

By the way, the English alphabet lists consonants and vowels together in this order: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
We can separate the consonants B C D F G H J K L M N P Q R S T V W X Y Z
from the vowels AEIOU to illustrate the differences and similarities:

CONSONANTS
If you were to take out the English letters that don’t appear in Hangeul, it would look like this:
B   C   D   F   G   H   J   K   L   M   N   P   Q   R   S   T   V   W   X   Y   Z
But, in this order . . .  G   N   D   R/L   M   B   S   J   CH   K   T   P   H 

No “C” only CH
No “F” (commonly replaced with “P” sound—”coffee” becomes “coppee” sounds like COPY)
No “Q”
R and L are combined
No “V”
W appears in vowels
No “X” “Y” or “Z”
Part of the 14 is a “null” sound “Ng” which looks like a circle ㅇ, and is called “ieung”  sounds like EE-YUN and comes after “S”. It has 2 uses. When it appears at the beginning of a syllable before a vowel it is silent/just a placeholder, and when it appears after a consonant it becomes “ng” sounds like it would in an English word ending in ng, like “going”.

So, Hangeul has  14 Consonants — 자음 (jaeum sounds like CHA-AHM)
ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ,  ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, [ㅇ,] ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅎ
Ga, Na, Da, Ra, Ma, Ba, Sa, [Ng,] Ja, Cha, Ka, Ta, Pa, Ha
Koreans use the letter plus the letter “a” to make a sound, rather than using the actual names of the letters, which are:
Giyeok, Nieun, Diguet, Rieul, Mieum, Bieub, Shiot (“S” in Hanguel often sounds like “SH”) [ieung], Jieut, Chieut, Kieuk, Tieut, Pieup, and Hieut.

Their version of the alphabet song (they have more than one song but this one makes it easy to memorize the order of the letters) uses Ga, Na, Da, Ra, Ma, Ba, Sa, Ja, Cha, Ka, Ta, Pa, Ha. Sing along . . . I like this version because it’s slowed down so it’s easier to learn (and includes the major vowels).

DOUBLE CONSONANTS
Hangeul also has 5 double consonants
ㄲ,  ㄸ,  ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ
Ssang Giyeok, Ssang Diguet, Ssang Bieub, Ssang Shiot, and Ssang Jieut

VOWELS
Hangeul has sooo many Vowels:
4 “A” sounds
4 “E” sounds
1 “I” sounds like “E”
2 “O” sounds
2 “U” sounds
6 “W” sounds
and 2 more unique vowel sounds.

Define . . .

Next: Syllables

Hanguel uses a grouping of syllables to form words. It’s a grouping of sounds rather than single letters