Hi! In today's lesson I will teach you all existing reading rules in Korean.
We will start off the general rules,
where I will teach you how to pronounce consonants depending on their position in a word.
Then you will learn about 'patchim' and exceptions to the general rules.
Just keep in mind that you don't have to absorb all this information at once, as it's gonna be quite a lot.
I hope today's lesson won't discourage you from learning Korean.
Just don't try to learn all at once. Okay?
First let's find out how to call each Korean consonant
since I'm going to refer to their names throughout this lesson.
The first letter is called [ kiyok ]
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'ssang' means 'double'.
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You don't have to memorize all this right now.
Although, it's easy to remember these names.
Just pause the video and go through each of these consonants.
Read them aloud for yourself and then play this video again.
Okay, this is the full list of Korean consonants.
As you might have noticed, some consonants are colored with the same color,
which means they are subjected to the same reading rule.
We will start with [ kiyok ], [ tigu't ], and [ piu'p ].
Here's the rule. When [ kiyok ] is placed between vowels,
like you see over here, it should be pronounced as 'G'.
In all other cases, when [ kiyok ] is the first letter in the word,
the last letter, or placed before a consonant read it as [ K ].
So this is [ kagu ]. Not [ kaku ] or [ gagu ]. It's [ kagu ], okay?
I hope you can hear the difference.
가구 is Furniture, 책 is Book, and 목숨 is Life.
The next letter is [ tigu't ].
This word is [ tuda ], which means 'to put' something.
It's also used as an auxiliary verb in some grammatical constructions
to add a particular meaning to a main verb.
So we read the first [ tigu't ] as 'T', since it's the first letter in this word,
and second [ tigu't ] as 'D',
because it's placed between vowels ㅜ and ㅏ.
Here [ tigu't ] is the last letter
and here it's placed before a consonant.
That's why we read them as the 'T'.
곧, 받침
And the last consonant that follows the same rule is [ piu'p ].
This word is pronounced as [ pabo ],
not [ papo ] or [ babo ], okay?
The second word is [ pap ].
And the last one is [ mopshi ].
When [ riu'l ] is a first letter in a word or placed between vowels, it should be read as soft 'R'.
Not like in Spanish, Russian, or Arabic.
And when is the last letter in a word or placed right before a consonant,
it should be read as ' L '.
Some people, especially native speakers, may argue
that [ riu'l ] produces just one sound which is something closer to ' L '.
if it was true, then this word should have been pronounced as [ na lu'l ],
which is wrong pronunciation.
First and second [ riu'l ] produce two different sounds.
First is more close to 'R'
and the second is more close to 'L'.
Take a look at these two examples.
Here and here [ riu'l ] is placed before a consonant ㄷ and ㅇ.
But here [ riu'l ] is pronounced as 'R'. Pa-ra-yo.
Because this syllable produces a vowel sound [ 아 ]
and when [ riu'l ] is placed between vowel sounds,
it's pronounced as 'R', okay?
I hope you're not confused.
If you do, please watch this again.
The next letters are [ shiot ] and [ ssang shiot ].
I have already explained how to read them in the previous lessons, but let me do this again.
So these two letters should be pronounced as 'S' and 'SH'.
depending on what kind of vowels comes after them. If it's a vowel from the first column
then read them as 'S'.
And if it's from the second column, it should be read as 'SH'.
So, let's take a look at a few examples.
[ Saram ], which means 'Person',
[ shigan ], not [ sigan ]. I have seen foreigners who say [ sigan ].
But it sounds like...
as if your name were Shaun and someone would call you Saun,
or instead of Shakira. Someone would call her Sakira.
These two letters sound differently.
The next word is [ ssu'da ],
which means 'to write', or 'to use', or 'to wear' a hat, for example.
And this is [ nalshi ], which means 'weather'.
The last consonant is [ iu'ng ].
I have already explained how to read it twice, if i'm not mistaken, in the previous lessons.
So, i'm not going to go into details.
What you need to know here is
when 이응 is placed right before a vowel
just ignore it, as it doesn't produce any sound,
and when it's the last letter in a syllable then read it as -ng-.
공, 강.
This word is 일, 공, 강아지.
So we are done with general rules.
And now I will briefly explain to you what is 'patchim'.
Then we will come back to this topic and we will talk about exceptions to these general rules.
Patchim is a final consonant or consonants in a syllable block.
From now on in this lesson there will be a bunch of things that you will just have to memorize.
But you know, what?
You don't have to remember all this at once.
If you forget any of these following rules,
you can watch this video again anytime in the future.
You see this words.
Can you make a guess where is 'pachim' I was talking about?
Pause the video and try to find them.
Just to give you a hint. There are 8 'patchim'.
These are 'patchim'.
Some have just one consonant and other have two consonants.
'patchim' that have two consonants are called [ kyop pat chim ].
When 'patchim' are followed by a consonant sound,
something happens to them. They are either pronounced differently,
for example this word, [ it ta ], not [ iss ta ],
or one of two letters is not pronounced like here [ op ta ].
[ shiot ] is not pronounced.
But when 'pachim' is followed by vowel sounds, nothing happens.
[ is so yo ], [ op so yo ]
Here is the full list of 'patchim' that are subjected to changes.
When these 'patchim' are followed by a consonant
the first letter should be read,
and when this 'patchim' are followed by consonants,
read the second letter,
and when it happens to these,
either the first or second letter should be read. It's not optional.
You need to know for sure where you should read the first letter and where the second letter
It looks complicated but to your luck
there are not so many words in Korean language that have this kind of patchim.
And these 'patchim' are more common.
When [ shiot, ssang shiot, jiu't, chiu't, or t'iu't ] is followed by consonants, they should be read as 'T'.
Take a look at this examples...
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Here 'patchim' are followed by consonants.
That's why we applied this rule.
And here 'patchim' are followed by a vowel sound.
That's why we haven't made any changes.
Now let's get back to the previous topic and talk about exceptions to the general rules.
The first letter is ㄱ and all pachims that produce the same or a similar sound as K.
When ㄱ is followed by one of these five consonants
they should be read as follows.
Here are a few examples...
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When ㄱ is followed by ㄴ, ㅁ, or ㄹ
then ㄱ should be pronounced as ㅇ
And if it's followed by ㄹ
then ㄹ also changes to ㄴ.
Look at this example.
It's pronounced as [ song nyu ], not [ sok ryu ] or [ song ryu ].
So read this as
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And when ㄱ is surrounded by ㅎ,
either from the left or the right side
ㄱ should be pronounced as ㅋ.
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That's all for ㄱ. Let's move on to the next letter,
which is ㄴ.
When ㄴ is surrounded by ㄹ,
ㄴ changes to ㄹ.
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The next letter is ㄷ and all it's 'patchim'.
When ㄷ is followed by one of this five consonants,
these five consonants should be read like this...
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And when ㄷ is followed by ㄴ or ㅁ, ㄷ should be pronounced as ㄴ.
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When ㄷ is surrounded by ㅎ
read ㄷ as ㅌ.
[ shil t'a ]
And the last exception for ㄷ is this.
When ㄷ is followed by a syllable 이,
read them as 지. [ ku ji ]
The next letter is ㄹ
When it's placed after ㅁ or ㅇ,
you should read the as ㄴ.
[ 음뇨수 ], [ 등녹 ].
not [ 음료수 ] or [ 등록 ], okay?
Next letter is ㅂ and all it's 'patchim'.
When ㅂ is followed by one of these five consonants,
these five consonants should be read like this
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And when it's followed by ㄴ or ㅁ
It's pronounced as ㅁ
That's why we say kamsahaMnida instead of kamsahaBnida.
The other two examples are [ 엄는 ], [ 짐마다 ].
The next exception is
when ㅂ is followed by ㄹ
both letters change in sound.
ㅂ produces ㅁ sound and ㄹ produces ㄴ sound.
We write [ 입력 ]
but read it as [ 입녁 ]
And the last exception for ㅂ is this. When followed by ㅎ, read it as ㅍ.
[ 이팍 ]
The next letter is ㅈ.
When surrounded by ㅎ,
it should be read as ㅊ.
[ 안치다 ], [ 그러치 ].
The next consonant is ㅌ.
When followed by the syllable 이, read them as 치. 가치.
And finally the last exception for letter ㅎ.
ㅎ in general should be read very softly in Korean language.
You actually hardly can hear ㅎ sound
in korean language, especially when it's preceded by ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅇ, or ㄹ,
or surrounded by vowel sounds.
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In all these examples I'm not even sure if you heard me saying ㅎ.
Well, that's all for today.
Once again, you don't have to learn these rules all at once.
I just gave this information to you for future use.
You can watch this video again whenever you need
and if you have any questions,
feel free to leave them in the comments.
Have a wonderful day and see you next time!