Most alphabets grew slowly over centuries. Hangul did not. It was designed in the 1440s, by a committee, with a written explanation of *why* each letter looks the way it does.
That is the good news for you: the shapes are not random. Once you see the logic, five letters take about two minutes.
The first five consonants
Each one is a picture of what your mouth does when you say it.
ㄱ · g / kThe back of your tongue rising to the roof of your mouth. Say “g” and feel it.
ㄴ · nThe tip of your tongue touching just behind your teeth.
ㅁ · mA mouth, closed. Square.
ㅅ · sA tooth. Air hissing past it.
ㅇ · —An open throat. At the start of a syllable it is silent — a placeholder.
ㅇ is the strange one. Korean syllables must start with a consonant, so when a syllable really starts with a vowel sound, ㅇ sits there holding the space and makes no sound at all.
연습 · Practice
이 레슨에는 풀어 보는 문제가 3개 있습니다. 앱에서 하나씩 맞히며 넘어갑니다. 3 exercises come with this lesson — open it to work through them.