Korean/RWP/Lesson 4

Welcome back! This is the 4th lesson of "Learn to read, write and pronounce Korean". This lesson covers the rest of the basic Korean letters.

The vowel ㅜ (u)
The first new letter is the vowel ㅜ (u):

The vowel ㅜ is pronounced like the oo in boot. Similar in appearance to ㅗ (o) and 一 (eu), the vowel ㅜ (u) is wider than it is tall, so it is written below the consonant rather than next to it.

Exercise
The following Korean words contain ㅜ (u). Guess what the words mean. Click "Show" to check your answers, as usual.

You can check your answers by clicking at "Show" above, as usual.

Exercise: writing practice
Try to write the following words:

The vowel ㅓ (eo)
The next of the vowels to learn is ㅓ (eo):

The vowel ㅓ is pronounced like the u in plus (IPA: [ ʌ ]) and transcribed as eo (think "surgeon"). Similar in appearance to ㅏ (a), the vowel ㅓ (eo) is taller than it is wide, so it is written next to the consonant.

Exercise
Try to translate these Korean words:

Try translating the following words into Korean:

The vowel ㅔ (e)
The next vowel to learn is the digraph ㅔ (e):

The appearance the vowel ㅔ shows that it was originally a diphthong of ㅓ (eo) and ㅣ (i). Today, it is pronounced like the e in the Australian pronunciation of word bed and transcribed as e.

Exercise
Try to translate these Korean words:

The vowel ㅐ (ae)
The last vowel for this lesson is the digraph ㅐ (ae):

The appearance the vowel ㅐ shows that it was originally a diphthong of ㅏ (a) and ㅣ (i). Today, it is pronounced like the e in the American pronunciation of the English word bed and transcribed as ae.

Exercise
Try to translate these Korean words:

The consonant ㅎ (hieut)
The next consonant for this lesson is ㅎ (hieut):

Exercise
Try to translate these Korean words:

The consonant ㅈ (jieut)
The last consonant for this lesson is ㅈ (jieut), it is pronounced as a j or a ch:

Exercise
Try to translate these Korean words:

End of lesson 4
If you learned the letters in this lesson, you are ready to go on to lesson 5, where you will learn some simple variations of the letters you already learned.