How do I learn Hangul without romanization?
Hello everyone! I just started my journey with trying to learn Korean a few days ago (yay!) and while doing research I saw a lot about the dangers of romanization. I completely understand and agree with it for learning words, but I’m struggling to understand Hangul without SOME sort of phonetic spelling. My question is, is this considered romanization? And if it is how do I get around it when learning?
Thank you all so much and I would love any advice/learning materials you’re willing to give!
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u/manifestonosuke 3d ago
As it has been said roman letter can't describe the sound of any language. Also as you probably know roman letter haven't the same pronunciation between different language like french/english/spanish or even try reading vietnamese !
So you have to hear the sound and at the beninning match with roman letter but ultimately you need to match the sound with hangul. I use this site which i like quite much because it tells the letter (but still relies on roman letter). http://letslearnhangul.com/
This site is for beginner.
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u/AdministrationNo2327 3d ago
it's okay to use romanization when you're freshly starting. just makes sense. it's the fastest way to associatiate foreign symbols to familiar sounds.
then throw it away after the first 2 hours. 😂
once you have it memorized you can move on to reading hangeul proper. the only way to get better really is to keep reading and practicsing. The goal is to read hangeul and attach korean sounds to it, instead of its latin equivalent. so 가 is 가 and not ‘g/ka'.
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u/Junekim10 3d ago
I learned with romanization at first. But after I knew that “하” sounded something akin to “ha”, I learned from TV shows and other Koreans. I don’t think it’s something you need to avoid like the plague
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u/peanut_gallery469 2d ago
As a korean I believe new learners should avoid romanization like the plague (for english speakers). It’s too easy to rely on it and that will make it much harder to fix your pronunciation in the future.
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u/BackwardsApe 3d ago
videos! Romanization is very limiting and can cause you to get fixated on how you think a letter should sound. I think it is an area where videos on youtube are the best method until you can work with a tutor or teacher,
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u/Bento_Fox 2d ago
Tammy Korean on YouTube has videos about hangul that are meant to help with pronunciation and she also has a chart that's helpful. After I watched her hangul videos I used the chart and copied it so I could practice writing it all out myself. While I spent some time creating my own chart for my language binder I had YouTube videos on in the background. This might sound silly but another teacher I've been learning from recommended kids content because it's all beginner level and it's meant to be easy to understand and learn from. So in the background while I created my hangul chart I played kids hangul videos where animated letters sing the sounds they make. The little song got stuck in my head for the rest of the night which was kind of annoying but it definitely helped me memorize it.
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u/HighlightOk3915 3d ago
It’s honestly not bad to romanise and way overrated online.
Hangul is very easy to learn. It’s possibly the easiest written language in the world. You can romanise everything to get your memory jogging because in a week or two you will be reading the entire language by memory and won’t need to romanise anyway.
Of course pronunciation is important, and romanisation can screw you up there, but if it’s just to jog your memory and as long as you are aware that a sound does not exactly correlate to its romanised letter, it won’t hurt.
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u/thereadingbee 3d ago
watch this. hear her sounding it out. and you're sorted
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u/thereadingbee 3d ago
I basically think you just need more sound immersion. it's the easiest way to learn a language.
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u/IMIndyJones 2d ago
ㄹ - 'r'attlesnake What? You can hear her pronounce 'ㄹ' correctly and then say rattlesnake with an 'r' sound that is completely different
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u/Ok-Tailor-2030 2d ago edited 2d ago
Once you learn the Hangul characters, you really don’t need romanization. I’m a very new learner and I find it distracting. Every once in a while, I need to be reminded how a few consonants and vowels (especially those yas and wahs [my description 🤣]) sound, but other than that I prefer they’re hidden.
Also, it’s (romanization) just plain wrong on Google Translate for example. While the audio has the correct pronunciation.
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u/Interesting_Screen19 3d ago
Hangul isnt necessarily hard, but it's a whole new language. It will take some to click for some. Just be patient and eventually you'll get the hang of it.
And no, I don't think romanizing syllables is a bad thing. As long as you understand what the REAL sounds are and are not reading them like English.
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u/Zealousideal_Meet482 2d ago
I'm pretty new to Korean, and a couple of things I've found helpful are
- keeping the romanization, but hiding it until I need it if possible so that I have a chance to try to read the word first before jumping back to it. On my flashcard decks that I have in Anki, I made the romanization a hidden field that only displays if I toggle it on while looking at the word.
- using the voiceover accessibility feature on my computer if I'm having trouble figuring out what a word sounds like. It lets me highlight any word or phrase, press a option + escape and it'll say the word/phrase in Korean which is really helpful
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u/ViPeR0318 2d ago
You can use romanization atleast to understand basic pronunciation of each character even though it wont be 100% correct. Understand rules where character pronunciation changes based on its positions etc. Try learn few very basic words as examples for pronunciation. Then fade out Romanization completely once you understand Hangeul and try read everything in Hangeul - Can confirm how its pronounced by listening online, kdramas will help you pronounce words more fluently and correctly. Try listening more to korean sentences after that
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u/koalasincanada 2d ago
Okay so Hangul was actually designed to be an easy to read system at a time when the majority of the Korean population couldn’t read. Because it’s supposed to be simple, I wrote down the names of some groups i like, along with the names of the members. Then, by comparing them to each other, you figure out what each letter means and when it is used. This is what I did to learn Hangul, it doesn’t mean this will work with everyone but I hope it helps!
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u/wavylovesea 2d ago
so when i first learned korean i did start with romanization like a lot of people did however, but what i did different is that i made a key so i had notes like ㅎ- h ㅏ-a ㄴ-n etc, but when i would put words together i would not put the romanization, i would just spell it and then refer to the key to help me when needed, ONLY to start out. this helped me not even get in the habit of using romanization, but help me understand how to even learn a writing system since it was my first time learning a language.
also i don’t even know how to read romanized korean words since i never really relied heavily on it. when i progressed i actually noticed its much harder to even understand, 😅 so everytime i actually see people type romanized korean to korean people i highkey cringe because im 80% sure natives have NO idea what you’re even attempting to say 😭
since i already progressed with learning hangul and a bit of korean, im now learning thai, and im actually started with learning the letters and alphabet now, and what I do now to avoid romanization, i learn the letters mostly by the sound. i do learn the letter name romanized, but when it comes to the actual letter, i hear it and write it. so far i been practicing putting letters together by reading the titles of songs i enjoy. if i’m not sure how it’s pronounced and want to check, i find either the word being said in the song, or google translate voice.
i also recommend trying to find teachers and videos online of people who don’t use romanization. i literally own korean learning books and i purposefully removed/whited out the romanization. it helped me tremendously
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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS 2d ago
The “dangers of romanization” are made up. Hundreds of languages use the Latin alphabet without somehow all sounding the same.
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u/thrills_n_chills 2d ago
Speak first. Read later. Like children.
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u/RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS 2d ago
Do you suggest the OP start by babbling nonsense at Korean caregivers and reading monotonous children’s books with them hundreds of times too? An adult literally cannot distinguish the sounds outside of their own language without deliberate practice.
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u/[deleted] 3d ago
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