Basic Consonants (Part 1)
Learn the first 7 consonants: ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ
These first seven consonants (ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ) cover most of the basic Korean sound system. Three of them have a distinctive feature English speakers should note: ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ are 'unaspirated stops' that sound somewhere between English voiced (g, d, b) and voiceless (k, t, p) stops. They sound voiceless at the start of a word but voiced between vowels — which is why 가다 (to go) sounds like 'kada' at the start of a sentence but the same 가 sounds like 'ga' in 우리가.
ㄹ is the famous Korean liquid that is neither English 'l' nor English 'r' — it is a single tap of the tongue that sounds closest to a soft Spanish 'r' or the 'tt' in American English 'butter'. Japanese speakers will find this sound natural because it is essentially the same as Japanese 'ら/り/る/れ/ろ'. For English speakers, this sound requires deliberate practice — pronouncing ㄹ as a hard English 'r' is one of the most common foreign-accent markers in beginner Korean.
Forming Syllable Blocks
Korean is written in syllable blocks: consonant + vowel (CV) or consonant + vowel + consonant (CVC). For example, 가 = ㄱ+ㅏ, 간 = ㄱ+ㅏ+ㄴ. Vertical vowels go to the right of the consonant, horizontal vowels go below.