How To Learn Hangul In Under An Hour

Hi there!

Wake up: You should be spending LESS time drilling Hangul (grammar, rules, etc, etc.) and and more time putting it to use. If you’re spending more than a week on an Alphabet, either you prefer learning nice and slow (which is totally ok), or you’re wasting your time.

The basics of Hangul can be done & memorized in under an hour.

Forget the combinations for now, we’re mastering the characters.

Skip the flashcards, apps that “sound good” but get you nowhere, fluff-filled e-books on how to master hangul ONE BORING CHARACTER at a time.

Yawn.

Too slow.

What you need right now is a sheet of all the characters.

learn hungul in 1 hour

Consonants: 14 of them total.

Lets start with learning the consonants first.

Notice the chart below provides you with the romanization.

Step 1: Break down & Memorize the 14 consonants into 4 groups. For simplicity’s sake, I did 4 (4, 4, 4, 2).

That breaks them down to #1 (g,n,d,r) #2 (m, b, s, o ) #3(j, ch, k, t) #4 (p,h). Memorize these 4 groups of ENGLISH letters first. Yes, I want you to memorize “g n d r,” “m b s o” and so on.

ㄱ gㄴ nㄷ dㄹ r
ㅁ mㅂ bㅅ sㅇ o
ㅈ jㅊ chㅋ kㅌ t
ㅍ pㅎ h

Step 2: Write them out.

Spend say 10 minutes writing all symbols out til you’re comfortable. Take a look at my image (in step 4) below as an example.

Step 3: Association: Done memorizing? You sure? Lets match up the romanized characters to the Korean ones. This is going to require creativity on your part. You’re going to take each character and associate them with something you already know. Here’s how I remember them:

  1. ㄱ looks like the Russian letter G in reverse which makes it easy for me. In your case, you can try imagining the ㄱ as a gun, (also starts with G) or that horizontal line within the actual letter G.
  2. ㄴ would look like an “n” if you took the curvy part of the “n” and flattened it down.
  3. ㄷ This is easy. It’s the letter “D” but looks like a C. So when I see it, I think “C is D.”
  4. Also easy. It’s the letter “R” but looks like a backwards S. Same as C is D, R is S. Can you think of anything else you can connect ㄹ with the letter “R”? Go with the first thing you think of.
  5. Do the same for the others.

Step 4: Connect The Two. You’ve memorized the 4 consonant groups. (G N D R), ( M B S O), (J CH K T), (P H). Now write them out in Korean several times ’til you’re done.

Now, onto the vowels!

Step 1: The Vowel Breakdown. Do the same exact thing. I break them down into #1(a, ya) #2 (eo, yeo) #3 (o, yo) #4 (u, yu) and #5 (eu i, ae) and memorize just the roman letter groups.

Note: I broke ’em down into 5 groups.

Notice how the characters in #1 are similar:(ㅏㅑ)

Same thing for #2 (ㅓㅕ), #3 ( ㅗ, ㅛ), #4 ( ㅜ, ㅠ) #5 (ㅡ, ㅣ, ㅐ).

So, there’s a VERY EASY pattern to memorize groups 1 to #4. We’ll talk about it in a second.

Remembering group 5 is easy now as it’s just 3 characters. But more on this later. For now, remember the groups.

Step 2: Write them out.

Step 3: Association: Remember the pattern mentioned above? All it really is, is adding an extra line or flipping the character. If you can remember this sequence, you’ll be okay.

Memorize this pattern… from #1 to #4 Right, Left, Up, Down. Don’t get it? Just look at #1 ㅏㅑ… the characters are facing right. In #2 ㅓㅕ – they’re facing left. In 3, ㅗ, ㅛ, they’re up and in 4, ㅜ, ㅠ, they’re down.

Rightㅏㅑ Left ㅓ ㅕ Up ㅗ ㅛ Down ㅜ ㅠ And #5…. ㅡ ㅣ ㅐ

Step 4: Connect The Two: Once you’ve gotten used to the pattern or came up with other associations, just write out the korean characters based the the groups. #1(a, ya) #2 (eo, yeo) #3 (o, yo) #4 (u, yu) and #5 (eu i, ae).

And that’s it.

Memorizing this takes less than an hour. No need to spend days or weeks.

However… easy come and easy go. You can learn this fast, but you can forget it even faster. Now, your next step is to jump into reading. You need to put it to use in order to memorize or remember Hangul well.

 


 

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Start practicing your Korean reading skills and learn some conversational phrases now. Check out my other articles with Korean conversational phrases and put your Hangul skills to use.

https://www.linguajunkie.com/korean-phrases/top-10-korean-convesational-phrases-you-need-to-know

 

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[…] How To Learn Hangul In Under An Hour […]

[…] casual. Let’s review them one more time but in roman letters. You may not know the alphabet (Hangul) […]

PERSON

this was really helped i was trying to learn korean from so many other things and then i found yours i can memorize them and wright them down easier thanks to you 🙂

Camilla

This is so difficult. I’m only fluent in English so it’s hard to pick up. After watching many K-dramas, I still can’t even remember how to say “hello” in Korean. I really want to understand but now it seems impossible. I don’t know whether I should give up or not.

[…] that day I had a bad day at school; I clicked it and I actually saw something interesting I say Lingua Junkieand I immediately clicked […]

syakir

i recommend this site because it is very efficeint and i took lesst than an hour to memorize as well as wrote those alphabet without even looking at them.

WXX

this is amazing. really. thanks a lot for the many tips that made memorizing so much easier 🙂

ExpatInKorea

another good thing to do is to play this game at , its fun and free to play and i learned hangul in about 30-40 minutes

Rm/IC/1n2days/jjang

Omygaaaaaad like im freakiiiing studying hanguel from videos on youtube like half a day yet i donnot understand buttt how freaking awesome is this right seriously you will learn this less than an hour like ill admit my brain is not gifted like whhuuut but this thing is so daebaak aja aja

[…] How To Learn Hangul In Under An Hour – Click here to Read It. […]

[…] In terms of associations, PEMDAS in Math is a good example and an easy way to remember the order of operations in Math… because you already know the letters P, E, M, D, A, S.  I’ve also used Association in Learn the Russian Alphabet in Under One Hour and How To Learn Hangul In Under An Hour. […]

[…] was considering doing association like I did with the Russian Alphabet and the Korean Hangul but I think that’d take more time and effort. Hiragana characters are pretty unique looking […]

The Junkie

No problem! I should probably do one for Japanese too, huh?

Janelle

Thanks for this! I’ve wasted so much time already browsing language-learning sites until I found this: “What you need right now is a sheet of all the characters.” Yes! That is what I need and exactly what I was looking for. Why was it so hard to find? I learned the Japanese syllaberies pretty quickly using an association method like the one you mention and I intend to do the same with this before my trip next week… thanks a lot! (^_^)

[…] that you can instantly relate/connect with something you already know. I mention this in “Learn Hangul in under one hour” […]