Basic Consonants

Basic Consonants

Goal: Read and write basic syllables with basic consonants

• 10 Basic Consonants (ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅇ, ㅈ,ㅎ)

Basic Consonants – How it is composed

For basic consonants, the stroke addition rule is applied to make harsh sounds.

• The sounds of the basic consonants ‘ㄱ, ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅅ, ㅇ’ are not harsh.
  

• If you blow out more than these sounds and make a loud sound, it becomes a harsh sound.  8 more characters with added strokes represent the harsh sound (ㅋ, ㄷ, ㅌ, ㅂ, ㅍ, ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅎ). For example, the character ㅋ is the character ㄱ plus one stroke (black line in the figure below).
• The shape of the consonant letters mimics the shape of the mouth, tongue, and oral structures.

10 Basic Consonants – Let’s Read

You may remember the shape of the consonant letters depending on which oral structure of the mouth the sound is produced from (See picture above). You can also remember the shape of the Korean consonants through the shape of the picture of the English alphabet with the same pronunciation.

Consonants	Shape	Sounds	Romanization
ㄱ		ㄱ sounds like the ‘g’ in gun	/g/
ㄴ		ㄴ sounds like the ‘n’ in nose	/n/
ㄷ		ㄷ sounds like the ‘d’ in door	/d/
ㄹ		ㄹ sounds like the ‘l’ in ladder or ‘r’ in radio	/r, l/
ㅁ		ㅁ sounds like the ‘m’ in monitor	/m/
ㅂ		ㅂ sounds like the ‘b’ in beer	/b/
ㅅ		ㅅ sounds like the ‘s’ in slide	/s/
ㅇ		ㅇ sounds like the ‘ng’ in ring [at start of a syllable, it is silent]	/no sound, ng/
ㅈ		ㅈ sounds like the ‘j’ in jellyfish	/j/
ㅎ		ㅎ sounds like the ‘h’ in hat	/h/

Basic consonants – Pronunciation

10 Basic Consonants – Let’s Practice

Hide the romanization and read the words aloud.

Consonant	Picture	Vocabulary	Meaning	Romanization
ㄱ		고기	meat	/go gi/
ㄴ		나비	butterfly	/na bi/
ㄷ		다리	leg	/da ri/
ㄹ		라디오	radio	/ra di o/
ㅁ		미녀	Pretty woman	/mi nyeo/
ㅂ		부자	Rich person	/bu ja/
ㅅ		소녀	girl	/so nyeo/
ㅇ		나이	age	/na i/
ㅈ		지도	map	/ji do/
ㅎ		호수	lake	/ho su/