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8/2/2019 All About 2

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Korean Writing System

2 Grammar Points


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Grammar Points

The Focus of This Lesson Is the Korean Writing System.

Korean uses (Hangeul) as its writing system . King (Sejong) invented (Hangeul) and announced it to the public in 1446, and it has been the official writing systemever since. King (Sejong) invented this system, which was one of the many great thingsthat he did for the country and the people, because he felt that it was not right for Korea not

to have its own writing system . Before the invention of (Hangeul), people used theborrowed characters from Ch inese that had the closest sounds to the Korean sounds, butthis was not an ideal system for writing Korean.

Now, people consider (Hangeul) to be one of the most scientific writing systems in theworld because it can express more sounds more accurately than any other writing systemcan. The biggest strength of (Hangeul) is that it is very easy to learn to read and write.

You can learn it within a few days or even hours, so there is no reason not to learn it if you'replanning a visit to Korea. There are many loan words in the Korean language that come fromEnglish, such as "taxi," "bus," "camera," and so forth, so you will find yourself understandingthe words in the signs or menus just by knowing how to read (Hangeul).

The Korean Alphabet

There are fourteen basic consonants and ten basic vowels in Korean. There are compoundconsonants and vowels too, but we form them by combining the basic consonants andvowels. Therefore, if you understand the basic consonants and vowels, of which there arejust twenty-four, you can basically read everything in Korean.

In Korean, you form words by combining consonants and vowels. Unlike in English, in which

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you just write one letter after another in a straight line to form words, in Korean you form asquare for each syllable. For example, if you want to write the English name "Sam," it's threeletters written one after another in a line, but in Korean, it's , one letter, composed of three

parts, written in a square.

Consonants

The following is the list of the basic consonants in Korean, with their sim ilar sounds in Englishin the brackets.

Korean Romanization

[-g] [-n] [-d] [-r/-l] [-m] [-b] [-s] [no sound/-ng] [-j/-z] [-ch] [-k] [-t] [-p] [-h]

Vowels

The following is the list of the basic vowels in Korean, with the romanization written in thebrackets.

Korean Romanization

[-a] [-ya]



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[-eo] [-yeo] [-o]

[-yo] [-u] [-yu] [-eu] [-i]

Forming a Letter

Forming a letter using the consonants and the vowels from above is very easy. As mentionedabove, you form letters by putting them into a square shape.

1) If the vowel has a long vertical line, like , , , , or , the consonant comes in on theleft half, and the vowel comes in on the right half.

For Example:

1. + = [-a]

2. + = [-geo]

3. + = [-bi]

2) If the vowel has a long horizontal line, like , , , , or , the consonant comes in onthe upper half, and the vowel comes in on the lower half.

For Example:

1. + = [-o]

2. + = [-ju/-zu]



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3. + = [-kyu]

3) After a combination of a consonant and a vowel, if there is one more consonant attachedat the end, the consonant comes in at the very bottom of the already existing square, and theother parts get squeezed a little toward the top to make the entire shape a square again.

For Example:

1. + = [-an]

2. + = [-jong]

3. + = [-bul]


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