Korean for beginners
If you are starting from zero, you do not need an overview but an order. This page gives you one — six steps, each with its grammar topic, the matching words and a reason why it sits where it does.
Why an order and not a list
This site has 164 grammar topics. For someone just starting out, that is not an offer but a wall: everything looks equally important, and the obvious way in — starting at the top — leads into the tense system before a single sentence is in place.
So the order below is not a sorting of the material but a recommendation, and it follows one rule: every step must make one more sentence possible that you could not say before. Anything that does not — however correct it may be — comes later.
Three things first
- Twenty minutes on six days beats two hours on one. That is not a lecture but the reason this site has a daily goal: revision works through intervals, and you need more than one interval.
- You will not learn pronunciation here. This site explains and tests, both in writing. Speaking and listening are learnt with people or with recordings — the site is no substitute for that and does not try to be.
- Mistakes are the point of practice, not its failure. Whatever you get wrong comes back tomorrow; whatever sticks, only in five weeks. If you only practise what you already know, you do not move forward.
The first six steps
Hangul first. Fourteen consonants and ten vowels, put together into blocks of one syllable each: 한 is h + a + n. An afternoon with the letters and every word on this site can be read — and the romanisation under each one can be switched off as soon as it is no longer needed.
To go with it: Greetings and set phrases — 39 words.
The verb comes last. Everything else — who, what, where, when — stands in front of it, and what is obvious is left out: 저는 학생이에요, “I am a student”, literally “I-as-for student am”.
To go with it: People and family — 38 words.
Korean marks what a noun does with a small word stuck to its end. 는 marks what the sentence is about: 저는, “as for me”. Its form depends on the sound before it — 은 after a consonant, 는 after a vowel — and that pattern comes back with almost every particle.
To go with it: I and you, this and that, who and what — 40 words.
The object gets 을 or 를: 커피를 마셔요, “I drink coffee”. With a subject particle, a topic particle and an object particle, the order of the nouns could change without the meaning changing — only the verb has to stay at the end.
To go with it: Food and drink — 40 words.
The polite ending -아요/어요 is the form you will use with almost everyone you meet. Which vowel it takes depends on the last vowel of the stem: 가요, 먹어요, and 해요 for every verb in 하다.
To go with it: The first verbs — 39 words.
The past is one more syllable before the ending: 먹어요, 먹었어요. Korean marks the past where English does, but adds no “did” and changes no vowel inside the verb.
To go with it: The clock and the calendar — 41 words.
And after that?
After these six steps you can manage simple sentences in the present and the past, questions and the first few hundred words. That is the point at which an order is no longer needed: from here, the way forward depends on what you need the language for.
All 36 topics of level 1 are on the 1 page; if you would rather practise straight away than read, start with the daily dose — it decides for itself what comes up today.