| Alphabet | English Equivalent | Extra Points | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| ㄱ | An unaspirated ‘k’ at the beginning of a word, and a ‘g’ most of the time in the middle of words. | By unaspirated, I mean that it’s not pronounced very hard, like the English ‘k’. | 가! – ka – "Go!" |
| ㄴ | ‘n’ | Made by almost biting on the tongue at the ends of words, and by placing the tongue behind the top teeth otherwise. | 나 – na – "I" |
| ㄷ | Like, ㄱ, this consonant is like the unaspirated ‘t’ in English. It is a ‘d’ in the middle of words. | 다 – ta – "all" | |
| ㄹ | A mixture between the English ‘r’ and ‘l’. When between vowels, it is like a single rolled Spanish ‘r’ or like the ‘tt’ in ‘butter’ in some American dialects. If there are two of them together, it becomes a solid ‘l’. | 가라! – ka-ra – "Go!" 달리 – tal-li – "differently" | |
| ㅁ | ‘m’ | 마음 – ma-ŭm – "heart" | |
| ㅂ | An unaspirated ‘p’ at the beginning of words, and a ‘b’ in the middle of words. | 반 – pan – "half" | |
| ㅅ | ‘s’ | When coming before the "ee" sound, it becomes an ‘sh’. | 산 – san – "mountain" 시 – shi – "poem" |
| ㅇ | In the bottom of syllables, this character is like the English ‘ng’ without the ‘g’ sound. At the beginning of syllables, this character is just a place marker and has no sound. | 잉어 – ing-ŏ – "carp" 영어 – yŏng-ŏ – "English" | |
| ㅈ | Unaspirated ‘ch’ at the beginning of words, ‘j’ inside words. | 자 – cha – ruler 자자 – cha-ja – "Let’s sleep" | |
| ㅊ | Strongly aspirated ‘ch’. | 차 – ch’a – "car" | |
| ㅋ | Strongly aspirated ‘k’. | 카페 – k’a-pe – "Café" | |
| ㅌ | Strongly aspirated ‘t’. | 탄내 – t’an-nae – "burnt smell" | |
| ㅍ | Strongly aspirated ‘p’. | 패 – p’ae – "medal" | |
| ㅎ | ‘h’ | Almost silent after ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅇ, between vowels. When it comes before or followsㄱ, ㄷ,ㅂ, or ㅈ, it makes the consonants aspirated: ㅋ, ㅌ,ㅍ, ㅊ respectively. | 해 – hae – "sun" |
The table above are taken from http://www.linguanaut.com/korean_alphabet.htm
