Which course should you start on?

Picking one adds that course's book and workbook to the kit and takes the other course back out. Pick it again to clear it. You can still drop any single book from the cart.

Your first month

Tick a line when it is done

How Korean works

Korean is written in Hangul, an alphabet of 14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels. Letters are not strung out in a line. They are stacked into blocks of two to four, and each block is one syllable, so a three-syllable word is three squares. Sentences put the verb last: "I coffee drink" instead of "I drink coffee". Small tags called particles attach to the end of nouns to mark the topic, the subject, the object, the place and so on, which lets the other words move around freely. Verbs never change for person (there is no "am, is, are"), but their endings carry tense, mood and how polite you are being to the listener. There are no articles, no grammatical gender and usually no plural marking, and anything obvious from context, including "I" and "you", is simply left out. Adjectives behave like verbs and take the same endings. Korean also counts with two number systems, one native and one borrowed from Chinese, and each has its own jobs.

Close-up of a laptop keyboard with a Hangul letter printed beside the Latin letter on each key — Hangul letters on a keyboard

The sounds English does not have

Several consonants come in threes: a plain one, a breathy one with a puff of air, and a tense one said with a tight throat. English speakers hear all three as the same letter at first. Listening to them side by side daily is what separates them.
Two vowel pairs trip everyone up: an open "o" as in "awe" against a rounded "o", and an unrounded "u" said with flat lips against a rounded "oo". Romanization blurs both, which is one more reason to drop it.
A consonant at the bottom of a block is called batchim. At the end of a word it is cut short and never released, and only seven sounds are possible in that position whatever letter is written.
When a bottom consonant meets the next block, sounds shift: it slides over to the next syllable if that one starts with a vowel, and some pairs change each other entirely. Spelling stays fixed and the sound moves, so learn each word from audio as well as from the page.
Korean has no stress accent. Give every syllable about the same weight instead of punching one of them the way English does.

Hear it explained

Go! Billy Korean Free video lessons, including a full beginner course and clear sound-change explanations

A long white shop sign hand-painted with five large green Hangul syllables above a market stall — A hand-painted shop sign

Polite or casual: which Korean comes first?

Every Korean sentence ends in a way that shows your relationship to the listener. There is no neutral option, so you have to pick one to start.
Start with the standard polite style, the one whose sentences end in "yo". It is correct with strangers, shop staff, coworkers and anyone older, and it will never offend.
The formal style, ending in "nida", is what you hear in news broadcasts, announcements and job interviews. Learn to recognize it early and to use it for set phrases like "thank you" and "nice to meet you".
Casual speech is the polite style with the last syllable dropped, plus different words for "I" and "you". Dramas and songs are full of it, but using it with someone who has not invited it is rude. Understand it now, and speak it only with close friends your own age.
Honorific verbs and titles are a second layer, used when the person you are talking about outranks you. Beginners need about a dozen of them, and courses introduce them gradually.

A Seoul side street at night, both sides stacked with glowing neon shop signs in Hangul

Where Korean can take you

Open one to see where to start

Dramas and musicFollowing a scene without subtitles or singing along with the meaning in your head. It is the reason most people start, and it rewards slang, casual speech and listening practice that courses reach late.

Start here

Pick one song you already know by heart, pull up its Korean lyrics and sound out the chorus in Hangul without looking at the romanization. Then look up three words from it.

TravelSeoul is easy to get around with a little Korean, and outside the big cities a little goes a long way. Reading signs and menus, ordering, paying and asking directions takes a few hundred words.

Start here

Learn to read the ten menu and sign words you would meet on day one of a trip (entrance, exit, restroom, water, how much) and practice saying each one with the polite ending.

The proficiency testTOPIK is the official exam used by Korean universities and employers. Its beginner paper tests listening and reading only, which makes it a realistic first-year goal with a fixed word list.

Start here

Download one free past paper for the beginner level of the test and try the first five reading questions untimed, to see what the exam actually asks.

TOPIK official site

ConversationLanguage exchange apps pair you with Koreans learning English, and paid online tutors are affordable. Speaking early is uncomfortable, and nothing else fixes pronunciation as fast.

Start here

Install a free language exchange app this week and send one written message in Korean introducing yourself: your name, where you live and that you are a beginner.

HelloTalk

Reading for funWebtoons, song lyrics and children's books are the usual first real texts. Webtoon dialogue is short, current and full of the casual speech textbooks leave out.

Start here

Open a free slice-of-life webtoon in Korean and read one episode, looking up only the words that repeat. Speech bubbles are short and the pictures carry the rest.

Naver Webtoon

The official test site

TOPIK official site Test dates, registration and free past papers for the Test of Proficiency in Korean

What trips beginners up

What to expect, and the habits to drop

Hangul takes days, and the language takes years. The US Foreign Service Institute puts Korean in its hardest group for English speakers, at about 2,200 class hours to professional fluency. Simple conversations come far sooner, usually inside the first year of daily study.
Almost no vocabulary looks familiar. Outside of borrowed English words, every noun and verb is new, so word learning never stops being the main job. A few flashcards daily beats a long list on Sunday.
Listening lags behind reading for a long time. Natural speech is fast, drops particles and runs sounds together. Slow learner audio first, then short real clips with Korean subtitles, closes the gap.
Staying on romanization past the first week trains the wrong sounds and makes every later word harder to spell.
Translating word by word in English order produces sentences no Korean would say. Learn whole example sentences and swap one piece at a time.
The topic and subject particles feel interchangeable for months. Everyone mixes them up, native speakers understand you anyway, and the difference settles with exposure, not with rules.
Collecting apps, channels and books feels like studying. Finish one course's first book before adding a second source of grammar.

Cream letter tiles printed with single Hangul consonants and vowels, scattered across a black table — Loose Hangul letter tiles

Where to learn and look things up

Dictionary lookups

Naver Dictionary is what Koreans themselves use, with recorded audio and hundreds of example sentences per word.

Simple definitions

The Korean-English Learners' Dictionary from the National Institute of Korean Language marks each word's difficulty level and keeps its explanations short.

Checking a sentence

Papago translates Korean more reliably than general translators. Use it to check what you wrote, not to write for you.

Flashcards

Anki is the standard spaced-repetition app, with shared decks matched to the popular coursebooks and to the proficiency test word lists.

Questions

R/Korean answers beginner grammar questions daily and keeps a list of vetted resources.

Your public library

Many carry at least one Korean course with audio, and some lend graded readers and children's books in Korean.

Dictionaries, flashcards and a forum

A low tile-roofed shopfront with green doors and Hangul signboards, a bicycle parked in front — Signboards to sound out

About the kit

Korean is cheap to equip, because the whole kit is books. The purchase that matters is the coursebook, so choose your course above and its book and workbook join the cart. Match the workbook to the textbook's series, level and edition, because the exercises follow the chapters one for one. The handwriting workbook comes first in practice: tracing each letter in stroke order is the fastest way to make Hangul stick, and neat blocks make your own notes readable. The grammar reference is where every ending lives in one place with example sentences, so you stop hunting back through lessons. The easy reader is the extra reading every course runs short on. Check that it prints the Korean with no romanization and puts the English on a facing page or after the story. The travel, test and drama add-ons are for a specific goal, so leave them out until you have one.

A sheet of paper printed with short columns of Korean text, photographed at an angle — A printed page of Korean

Stack the study desk

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the cart. Clicking a card selects it there. The handwriting workbook, the grammar and the reader start in the stack. A course's book and workbook stay out until you pick that course in section 01, and the travel, test and drama books stay out until you switch them on in section 06 or with the chips in the cart. On the two course lines, keep the coursebook and its workbook on the same tier so they come from one series.

Hangul handwriting workbook

recommended · Alphabet

Writing each letter by hand in stroke order is the quickest way to memorize the alphabet, and it trains you to build syllable blocks that other people can read.

budget

Korean Hangul Writing Practice Workbook: An Introduction to the Hangul Alphabet with 100 Pages of Blank Writing Practice Grids (Online Audio)

4.5(16)

$7.89

Learning Korean

Which course should you start on?

Your first month

How Korean works

The sounds English does not have

Polite or casual: which Korean comes first?

Where Korean can take you

What trips beginners up

Where to learn and look things up

About the kit

Stack the study desk

Hangul handwriting workbook

Korean grammar reference

Easy Korean reader

Self-study Korean coursebook

Workbook for the self-study course

Classroom-style Korean textbook

Workbook for the classroom-style textbook

Korean travel phrasebook

Beginner TOPIK vocabulary book

Beginner TOPIK practice test book

Korean slang and drama expressions book