subject: Learning Korean For Non-koreans [print this page] The Korean language is a phonemic writing system. A phoneme is the tiniest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language. Korean language is a phonemic writing system. A phoneme is the tiniest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language. The Korean alphabet is 24 letters.
A Korean letter is Hangul. are consonants and are vowels.
In addition to these letters, there are some mixed consonants and mixed vowels like , , , ,,,,,, ,,,, and ,,,,,,,,. Each have a unique sound. Korean vowels always make same sounds unlike English, however.
In English, the letter a sounds like a, eo, ei, or according to its location or how it is used. That is why Korean is easier to learn for a foreigner.
We could build a word with these letters. For example, sounds like g, sound like a and we could make a letter (ga).
Although Korean is phonemic, initial consonant, vowel and last consonant make a word like a syllable.
For example, we make a word with , , .
One or more letters joined together make lots of words.
Korean has a different sentence structure than English.
In English, Subject comes first and Verb and then Object comes afterwards.
But in Korean, Subject comes first and Object and then Verb comes afterwards.
For the questioning sentence, the sentence structure is same but verb should change from ~~ to ~?
This is basic sentence meaning " He is a student." ? This is questioning sentence meaning "Is he a student?" Notice that changes to .
We could use the same sentence structure for Past tense and Future tense with vowel change.
This s basic sentence meaning "I am going to school."
. This is a past tense sentence.
Notice that verb changes to .
. This is a future tense sentence.
Notice that verb changes to .
In Korean, there is an honorific to the person you talk with or person you are talking about. There are different levels of politeness in Korean, standard polite and honorific polite. The standard polite ending is just . So the verb (to buy) in the standard polite is . However, the honorific polite ending is (). So the verb in the honorific polite is . With a ending verb like it'll be . Notice that the honorific polite ending also contains the , but has the extra that the standard polite doesn't have.
This is a very basic overview of the Korean language. There are so many topics to learn Korean. You may consider building your vocabulary using a Korean to English dictionary or go to a Korean language school to learn how to read and write.
