Lesson 15: Vowels

Welcome back! 🙋

Hope everyone is doing well.

We have finally moved on from learning consonants to vowels!

If you can recall, we have 24 Korean characters. 14 consonants and 10 vowels. 

ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ <- 14 consonants

ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ<- 10 vowels

We have learned all 14 consonants and it is time to learn our 10 Korean vowels.

Unlike the consonants, we will be learning all 10 vowels at once in this lesson!

Do not worry 😏 It is not as difficult as you think !

To learn our vowels, we have a special guest from our consonants.......(drum roll plesae~~) it is ㅇ (Ieung) !!

You can definitely visit Lesson 8 again, but I have mentioned that consonant ㅇ does not have a sound without a vowel !!

To elaborate on this, when we practice our vowels, even though you are pronouncing, for example, ㅏ(ah), what you are actually reading is 아(a/ah). ㅇ consonant is added but the pronunciation does not change.

So if we look at the 10 vowels above, you are actually reading

아 야 어 여 오 요 우 유 으 이 <- 10 vowels

Even though I knew Korean since young, it is still fascinating to me 😃 

For this lesson though, I would not be adding ㅇ as we are focusing on the vowels only. 

But do keep in mind this little cool fact for your reference😎

Let's get started with the pronunciation first. 

Instead the bracket is (this will be how it is written/ how it is pronounced)

1st vowel is ㅏ (a/ah). Unlike English, when you are reading this vowel, you are not pronouncing the alphabet 'a' but rather the word 'ah'.  

2nd vowel is ㅑ(ya). The way it is written matches how it is pronounced. 

3rd vowel is ㅓ(eo/uh). This is written with 'eo' but you can read it as 'uh'

4th vowel is ㅕ(yeo) The way it is written matches how it is pronounced. This is one of the difficult vowels to pronounce. It is 'y(e)o' and as English words do not have this pronunciation, you really want to listen and practice this vowel. 

5th vowel is ㅗ(o/oh) This is written with 'o' but you can read it as 'oh'

6th vowel is ㅛ(yo) The way it is written matches how it is pronounced. 

7th vowel is ㅜ(u) The way it is written matches how it is pronounced. You pronounce it with the English vowel 'u'

8th vowel is ㅠ(yu/you) This is written with 'yu' but you can read it as 'you'

9th vowel is ㅡ (eu) We have the e(u) sound that you are familiar with. English words do not have this pronunciation, so it is definitely one of the most difficult one to pronounce as well. I will be posting an audio clip later in this lesson.

Our last vowel is ㅣ (i/ee) You may also recall this pronunciation as well! Just like the English vowels, 'i' is spoken like 'ee'.

So, these are our 10 Korean vowels! Some may be easier to pronounce than the others, right? Let's listen to the clip below to see how each one is pronounced.

Definitely pay closer attention to ㅕ(yeo) & ㅡ(eu) as it is not as straight forward to pronounce it just by reading 'yeo' and 'eu'. 

Let's try with the activity. As mentioned, since most of the vowels are straight forward, I have created one for ㅕ(yeo) and ㅡ (eu)

ㅕ & ㅡ Activity (Opens a New Window)

We will be adding all consonants and vowels together and practice on our next lesson 16 but let's try few on them to give you a taste.

Let's pick three consonants ㄱ,ㄷ,ㅎ. If you can recall, these three vowels are equivalent to G,D, and H sound.

Let's also pick three vowels ㅏ,ㅣ, ㅗ. These vowels are pronounced as AH, EE, and OH. 

If we add each consonant with vowels, we now have 9 Korean words.

가, 기, 고 

다, 디 ,도

하, 히 호 

Let's look at 가 for an example. ㄱ has a 'G' sound and ㅏ has 'ah' sound. So 가 is pronounced as 'Gah'.

Using this concept, here are its pronunciations. Keep in mind that this is how it is pronounced not how it will be written.

가 (Gah), 기 (Gee), 고 (Go)

다 (Dah), 디 (Dee) ,도 (Do)

하(Hah), 히(Hee), 호 (Ho)

Is this concept easy to understand? Let me know in the comments. We will go through in depth on our next lesson, but this is how you would put a consonant and a vowel together. If you can remember how each consonants and vowels are pronounced, you would have a much easier time understanding our next lesson. 

All the work that you have put in to learn consonants and vowels are starting to pay off right? You are doing an amazing job! Let's keep hustling💪 

 

Definitely practice getting all the vowel consonants pronunciations correct.

Obviously, you would want to have the pronunciations correct right? 

But reason for the emphasis is that on lesson 17, we are focusing on the double consonants and vowels!

Do not be too surprised though as not all consonants and vowels have its double.  

But it would be easier to learn the doubles if you have the pronunciation before hand. 

Quite a long lesson today. It might be overwhelming at first since we learned 10 Korean vowels with its usage. But read it over, understand the concepts and you will have a much easier time learning now on. 

On lesson 16 (Labeled with Beginner 201 now), we will be putting each consonant with vowels to create a word. Now its where we get serious and practice harder. It might not be easy, but I can promise you it will pay off when you start learning Korean words or lyrics.

 

Let us keep working hard as always and I will see you on the next lesson.

Stay safe and have a wonderful day everyone!