More Vowels

Are you tired of having only to work with? Would you like to buy some more vowels? Here are two more for free:

, pronounced like the o in oh!

, pronounced like the oo in moon. [The standard way of writing Korean using English letters, known as Romanization, uses the letter u to stand for this oo sound, and that's what we'll use from now on.]

Now we have to stack our consonants and vowels on top of each other if we wish to stay within the square box:

This syllable: is pronounced mok with a long o, and it's the word for neck or throat.

, meaning door, is pronounced mun with a long u.

Letter-stacking rule: vowels that are "vertical", like , go to the right of the first consonant in your syllable. Vowels that are "horizontal", like , go under the first consonant in your syllable. All of this is done to make sure that syllables fit into a square box.

Let's Go Crazy!

Let's look at a word that has both horizontal and vertical vowels in it: This word: , meaning elder sister, is pronounced nu-na.

Here's another word: . It means tree. Can you figure out how it's pronounced? (Answer on next page). 

What was that word?

Let's break (the word for tree) up into its parts, taking it out of the square syllable boxes so we can figure out how it's pronounced:

n	a	m
		u

This word is pronounced na-mu .

Pretty easy, isn't it? It's a simple application of the rules for syllables:

1. A syllable begins with a consonant.
2. A syllable has at least one consonant and one vowel.
3. Each syllable gets written in a square box.

On the next page are the rules for writing syllables into a square box. 

Syllable Stacking Rules

A syllable that consists of a consonant and a "vertical vowel" is written with the consonant on the left and the vowel on the right:

n

+

a

=

na

A syllable that consists of a consonant and a "horizontal vowel" is written with the consonant on top and the vowel underneath:

m

+

o

=

mo

If a syllable has a consonant, vowel, and consonant, the final consonant, called patch'im (meaning "supporting floor" in Korean) goes to the bottom -- or floor -- of that syllable.

m	+	a	+	n	=	man
m	+	o	+	k	=	mok

Notice that all these examples follow the basic rule that all syllables must begin with a consonant. This means that we may have a problem... 

What's the Problem?

We have a slight problem with one of our rules for writing syllables. What if we want to write the Korean word for afternoon, which is "ohu"? If we split it into syllables, o-hu, we see that the first syllable begins with a vowel, and that violates rule 1, which says that all syllables begin with a consonant.

To solve this problem, Korean uses this letter: . When it starts a syllable, it is a silent placeholder consonant.

This lets us write o-hu as: . The first syllable now begins with a consonant that doesn't get pronounced.

Here are some other Korean words that use the placeholder:

, meaning inside and pronounced an (that's the ah sound for the vowel, remember?)

, meaning "right" (as in right-hand) and pronounced u (that's the u sound in June).

, meaning "grace, suavity," and , meaning "peace" or "well-being."