Basic Korean #1: Deconstructing Korean letters

Korean letters are confusing! While we have alphabets, there must be thousands of independent characters. So it must look intimidating at first glance. If I were to start learning Korean as an adult, this is how I would want to start.

I would first want to know that the Korean letters can, and should be deconstructed. Here is one of the most complicated words that you might encounter (it's not a real word; it's just constructed that all the "parts" are visible.)

So, there are at most five parts that will appear in any given Korean language. It takes nothing more than the knowledge of the Korean alphabet to be able to recognize each part, but you should already see that these groupings exist. Some things to remember:

• The parts are labelled in the order of pronunciation. So, the most important part of any letter would be the part labelled 1, then 2 and 3, then 4 and 5.
• The parts 1, 4, and 5 are always occupied by consonants; the parts 2 and 3 are always occupied by vowels.
• It is very rare that all five parts are present. For the rest of this post, I give you some (mostly meaningless) Korean letters, so that you can practice deconstructing them. Notice that they do get increasingly complicated, and in some cases, since you don't know the Korean alphabet yet, the deconstruction is going to be complicated. But try your best, and try to recognize the recurring components, because those are the Korean alphabet at work!

Letters that use just the 1-2 positions:

두, 조, 교, 소, 뉴, 므

Letters that use just the 1-3 positions:

아, 먀, 서, 쳐, 기, 얘

Letters that use 1-2-3 positions:

뭐, 의, 과, 취, 왜, 뉘

Letters that use 1-2-4 positions:

불, 물, 못, 홋, 윷, 돛

Letters that use 1-3-4 positions:

막, 철, 옛, 벗, 낯, 삿

Letters that use 1-2-3-4 positions:

왈, 확, 뫗, 월, 긜, 읭

Letters that use 1-3-4-5 positions:

없, 닭, 칡, 덨, 릮, 넒

Letters that use 1-2-4-5 positions:

굷, 춞, 얾, 첛, 핅, 낡

Letters that use 1-2-3-4-5 positions:

놝, 뷁, 뭓, 붦, 칆, 틺