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Sunday, March 11, 2018

Learning About Korean and Learning Korean on Memrise - my memory aids for hello, goodbye, Korean and maybe

Problem
I am learning Korean on memrise. Most of the syllables aren't easy.

Answer
The language was created in the 15th century by ruler Sejong the Great.
The alphabet has:
19 consonants - whose shape imitates the shape of your mouth saying them.
21 vowels.
That's funny. Another site says 14 consonants and 10 vowels. I supposed it depends on whether you count the doubles and the end of word letters.

The word HAN means great. Geul means script or writing.
Han also means Korea.

I have made up a few memory aids.


Korean on the world map from Wikipedia article on Korea.


For example:

The M sound is square and reminds me of the same square shape in Chinese and Japanese means mouth.

The K sound is a bit like a kite shape or an arrow.

Memrise allows you to write in a word or add a picture as a memory aid.

The yo sound looks like two verticals and I think of it as two yo-yos, or the letter Y formed into a square.

The yae sound looks like an elongated H or ladder and I remember: Yay! I'm climbing a ladder.

Korean flag from Wikipedia.

Hangeul is the Korean word for Korean language and Korea. It looks like the letter o followed by a hanging symbol. So I remember 0h - hang - o!

The word for maybe/probably looks like o then a square then an opened square, o - maybe not - maybe.

The sign for Hi or goodbye has a circle in the air above another sign followed by a low circle below another sign. Think of it like the letter o in hello then the two letters o in goodbye.


Wikipedia and even simple wikipedia give you umpteen varations and are impossible for me to follow.

https://yeskorean.com/learn-korean/lesson-1-the-korean-alphabet-is-24-letters/

memrise.com

Author
Angela Lansbury

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