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King Sejong 세종대왕

Hangul (한글)

Okay, I am going to flip the tables on myself and do a little role reversal. Instead of teaching English I am going to teach you all a little Hangul, the Korean writing system. Now, I am not showing any words, just how to read the letters. Learn how to read an Asian language in one post, difficult say you? Worry not my friends; this writing system was developed to be learned in a day. Before I get into the actual system though I have to talk about the inventor, the Great King Sejong (세종대왕).

King Sejong 세종대왕

King Sejong ruled during the second Joseon (조선) dynasty. I love this guy honestly before he ruled, all the elite wrote in classical Chinese characters. However, this didn't work with Korean's complex grammar. So, only the ruling class were literate during his time, and Sejong was "Saddened by this." You can read more in the link, but long story short, he told the elites to suck it got the smartest people he could in the kingdom together (regardless of social status), called it the Hall of Worthies and set them to work inventing and improving ideas. One of these was Hangul, even though the ruling class did not like the idea that everyday people could begin to read taxes and know they are getting screwed. Okay, enough talking about Sejong, I could go on all day.

The Letters

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Consonants

Now, the writing system is fascinating because consonants resemble how the mouth forms when producing the sounds. That is crazy right! So, a 'ㄱ' sound lay your tongue down to make that 'g' sound. A 'ㄴ' sound is made by putting the tongue to the roof of the mouth for an 'n' sound. For 'ㅅ' you put your tongue to your teeth to make a 's' sound. 'ㅁ' is the shape of your mouth when you make a' sound. Finally, 'o' is the shape of your throat when you make an 'ung' sound. If you don't believe this, check out the link here, or look at the photo below (All information about phonetics is coming from this page). These letters are also the basic ones, so the rest just build off of them as you can see below.

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Vowels

Okay, there is a lot of philosophy in the creation of the vowels. The symbols a single dot, a horizontal line, and a vertical line represent Heaven, Earth, and Man respectively. If Heaven is to the right of man 'ㅏ', or above Earth 'ㅗ' they make 'a' and 'o' respectively and are known as bright vowels because you form them high in the throat. If Heaven is to the left of man 'ㅓ', or below Earth 'ㅜ' they make 'e' and 'u' respectively, these are the dark vowels because they are formed low in the throat. No dot, they are neutral.
Now, if you add a second dot, it is like adding 'y' to the vowel. Then, you can form the rest of the vowels by putting horizontal vowels 'ㅡ,ㅗ,ㅜ' with vertical ones 'ㅣ,ㅏ,ㅓ.' The horizontal vowel always comes first when forming the complex vowels and can become a shortened 'w,' as you can refer to the first chart.

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ABC Song (가나다송)

Here is the song that I was shown for learning my 가나다s, this is the actual order, so good to learn in this order. Same tune as our own ABCs, so I hope you find it helpful to memorize them. 😁

Final note

Each block of letters start with a consonant; if 'ㅇ' is the first, it is silent. Each block is a syllable and can contain 2-4 letters.

Okay, hope this made sense to you all!
안녕하세요!! (both hello and goodbye)

Until then,
Ride on!