There are 24 letters (jamo) in the Korean alphabet: 14 consonants and 10 vowels. The letters are combined together into syllable blocks.
 
The shapes of the the consontants g/k, n, s, m and ng are graphical representations of the speech organs used to pronounce them. Other consonsants were created by adding extra lines to the basic shapes.

The shapes of the the vowels are based on three elements: man (a vertical line), earth (a horizontal line) and heaven (a dot). In modern Hangeul the heavenly dot has mutated into a short line.
 
Spaces are placed between words, which can be made up of one or more syllables.
 
The sounds of some consonants change depending on whether they appear at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a syllable.
 
A number of Korean scholars have proposed an alternative method of writing Hangeul involving writing each letter in a line like in English, rather than grouping them into syllable blocks, but their efforts have been met with little interest or enthusiasm.
 
In South Korea hanja are used to some extent in Korean texts.
 
Korean can be written in vertical columns running from top to bottom and right to left, or in horizontal lines running from left to right.

 
Writings
 
Korean, a language spoken by about 63 million people in South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. The relationship between Korean and other languages is not known, though some linguists believe it to be a member of the Altaic family of languages. Grammatically Korean is very similar to Japanese and about 70% of its vocabulary comes from Chinese.
 

The Hangul Alphabet
 

 
The double consonants marked with * are pronounced fortis. There is no symbol in IPA to indiciate this.



Note on the transliteration of Korean

There are a number different ways to write Korean in the Latin alphabet. The methods shown above are:

   1. (first row) the official South Korean transliteration system, which was introduced in July 2000. You can find further details at www.mct.go.kr.

   2. (second row) the McCune-Reischauer system, which was devised in 1937 by two American graduate students, George McCune and Edwin Reischauer, and is widely used in Western publications. For more details of this system see: http://mccune-reischauer.org


Sample of in Korean



Transliteration

Modeun Ingan-eun Tae-eonal ttaebuteo Jayuroumyeo Geu Jon-eomgwa Gwonrie Iss-eo Dongdeunghada. Ingan-eun Cheonbujeog-euro Iseong-gwa Yangsim-eul Bu-yeobad-ass-eumyeo Seoro Hyungje-ae-ui Jeongsin-euro Haengdongha-yeo-yahanda.

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)