Preface

Introduction

1.
History of Hangeul

2.
Hangeul Overview

3.
Consonants / (1) Basic Consonants / (2) Intermediate Consonants / (3) Aspirated Consonants
/ (4) Double Consonants

4.
Vowels / (1) Basic Vowels / (2) Y-Vowels / (3) Double Vowels

5.
Pronunciations of Combined Characters / (1) Basic Rules / (2) Syllable-Final Closure
/ (3) Assimilation / (4) Coalescence / (5) Deletion

6.
Practice / (1) Hangeul Writing / (2) Korean Words in Hangeul / (3) English Words in Hangeul

7.
Advanced Skills

8.
Hangeul Typing / (1) Keyboard Typing / (2) Mobile Typing

About the Authors

Romanization Table

[Planning Intent]

The Korean Wave is expanding interest in Korean culture and the Korean language beyond Korean TV dramas and K-pop among foreigners.
However, Korean language textbooks written to date are either written in a way that is too difficult for foreigners to understand, like Korean textbooks translated into English, or they are too lightweight and fail to faithfully convey the principles of the Korean language and the Korean alphabet.
This book was written by a foreigner who participated directly as an author and based on his own experiences while learning Korean. It was created to enable readers to learn Korean in a fun and enjoyable way even when they have no prior understanding of the language.
Korean is the 11th most widely spoken language in the world, with over 80 million speakers. This book was started with a small but big dream of spreading the Korean language around the world.
This book is for reading and writing Korean, and we plan to expand it to include Korean vocabulary, grammar, and conversation in the future.
Future projects include a Korean vocabulary memorization technique through association to help foreigners easily remember difficult Korean words, and integrated language education through smartphone apps.



[Features and Differentiation]

This book is an introductory Korean language book designed to help foreigners with no knowledge of Korean learn to read and write in just two hours.
The biggest barrier to learning and mastering a language is the characters used in that language, with the more than 50,000 Chinese characters that cause people to give up on learning Chinese and Japanese being the most representative example.
This book explains in a very simple way the principles of expressing 8,800 sounds using 24 basic Korean characters.
Additionally, it includes methods for recognizing combinations of unused letters and handwritten Hangul commonly encountered in everyday life, making studying Korean more practical.
This book answers questions that foreigners often have when first encountering Korean, and includes the following techniques to help you learn Korean with a smile.

- Introducing an intuitive memorization technique that makes it easy to remember Korean consonants and vowels.
- Skills in interpreting Korean handwriting and artistic Korean works
- Learn the phonetic characteristics of Hangul by reading English sentences written in Hangul.
- A game to find the inappropriate letters in Korean expressions
- Practice learning the order in which Korean is written
- How to use the Korean keyboard


[Contents of this book]

We reveal the secrets to making it easy for foreigners to read and write Korean, even if they are new to the language.
In just two hours, you will have the amazing experience of understanding basic Korean and being able to pronounce words out loud.
Although learning Korean is easy at first, it can be easy to get bored with the many exceptions and the significant amount of difficult content. To overcome this, we have developed a well-structured program.
To avoid going crazy while studying Korean and overcome difficulties, we first make sure you master the basic concepts thoroughly, and then go over more complex principles comprehensively.
Afterwards, as you learn Korean, we implemented indexing and cross-linking so that you can easily find and study complex content that arises in different situations.
This way, you can focus on the most important concepts and avoid giving up on your Korean studies by trying to master less common topics.
The book is structured as follows:

Learning Korean with a Smile is a series of language learning books that takes a novel approach to learning Korean language.

With attention to foreign learners, the book gently introduces several new learning techniques, including intuitive memory aids.
It consists of four different books:
Reading and Writing, Vocabulary, Grammar, and Conversation.
The goal of this book series is to have fun with learning Korean, so anyone can learn Korean with a smile!