Hangul was created in 1443 specifically to be easy to learn — the Korean king who commissioned it wanted ordinary people to be able to read and write, not just the educated elite. Unlike Chinese characters or Japanese kanji, there’s no memorizing thousands of symbols. There are 24 basic letters, and once you know them, you can sound out any word in the language.

The Basic Vowels

Korean vowels are simple lines and dots. Here are the six most common ones:

The Basic Consonants

Consonants are shaped after the position your mouth and tongue make when you pronounce them — it sounds strange, but it genuinely helps the letters feel logical rather than arbitrary.

Writing each letter out by hand a few times helps it stick far faster than reading alone.

Putting Letters Into Blocks

This is the part that makes Hangul unique: letters aren’t written in a straight line like English. They’re grouped into square blocks, where each block represents one syllable — usually a consonant followed by a vowel, and sometimes a final consonant underneath.

Real Words You Already Know

Notice something? You could already sound out every one of those words using just the letters covered above. That’s the whole trick to Hangul — learn the small set of building blocks once, and every word in the language becomes readable.