All the Korean letters and the sounds they make
A clean reference: each letter, its closest English sound, and a word that uses it.
This is the list you want open beside you while you practise — no diacritics, no linguistic notation, just letters and sounds you can approximate today.
Approximate is the operative word. Every comparison below is close, not exact, and your ear will fix the rest.
Practise every letter on the free worksheet.
The basic consonants
Fourteen of them, roughly in the order Korean children learn them.
- ㄱ g/k — 가방 (bag)
- ㄴ n — 나 (I, me)
- ㄷ d/t — 다리 (leg, bridge)
- ㄹ r/l — 라면 (ramyeon)
- ㅁ m — 물 (water)
- ㅂ b/p — 밥 (rice, a meal)
- ㅅ s — 사람 (person)
- ㅇ silent / ng — 아이 (child), 강 (river)
- ㅈ j — 좋다 (good)
- ㅊ ch — 차 (tea, car)
- ㅋ k with air — 코 (nose)
- ㅌ t with air — 토마토 (tomato)
- ㅍ p with air — 팔 (arm)
- ㅎ h — 하늘 (sky)
The basic vowels
Ten vowels, built from a line and a dash.
- ㅏ ah — 사 (four)
- ㅑ yah — 야구 (baseball)
- ㅓ uh — 서울 (Seoul)
- ㅕ yuh — 여자 (woman)
- ㅗ oh — 오리 (duck)
- ㅛ yo — 요리 (cooking)
- ㅜ oo — 우유 (milk)
- ㅠ yu — 유리 (glass)
- ㅡ eu — 그 (that)
- ㅣ ee — 시 (poem, hour)
The tense consonants
ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ and ㅉ are the same shapes doubled, said with a tight throat and no puff of air: 꿈 (dream), 딸 (daughter), 빵 (bread), 쌀 (uncooked rice), 짜다 (salty).
Common questions
How many Korean letters are there in total?+
Twenty-four basic letters, plus five doubled consonants and eleven combined vowels made from those same pieces.
Should I memorise this table?+
No — use it while you write. Recognition through practice beats memorisation every time.
Both worksheets, free
The 4-page Hangul alphabet worksheet and the 2-page syllable bonus, emailed in seconds.