ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅈ ㅎ — where the blockage happens, and why some of these letters look like the inside of your mouth.
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A vowel is air escaping freely. A consonant is air being interfered with. So for every consonant there are only three questions: where is the blockage, how complete is it, and what happens to the air afterwards.
The blockage is as far back as your tongue can reach.
Paper strip in front of your lips. It should barely twitch. If it jumps, you are making the aspirated letter from lesson 5.
English “g” switches your vocal folds on before the release; Korean ㄱ at the start of a word has no buzz at all. And you do not have to do anything about it later — sitting between two vowels, this letter picks up a buzz automatically.
Tongue tip forward, and the air is redirected out of your nose.
Pinch your nose shut while holding the sound. It should stop dead. If it keeps going, the air is coming out the wrong way.
Almost the same as English. This one is nearly free.
Same tongue position as ㄴ, but the nose is shut and the air is trapped.
Paper strip: barely a twitch, same as ㄱ.
English “d” buzzes from the start and English “t” explodes with air. Korean ㄷ does neither: no buzz, almost no air.
Not an English R and not an English L. It is a single, fast tap.
If you can hold the sound, it is wrong. This one physically cannot be held — it is a single movement.
English R curls the tongue back and rounds the lips; English L parks the tongue and holds. Korean ㄹ at the start of a syllable does neither — it is closest to the quick tap in the middle of American “water”. At the bottom of a syllable it behaves differently, and lesson 8 covers that.
Lips shut, nose open. The letter is a picture of the closed mouth.
Pinch your nose: the sound must stop.
Nothing to unlearn. Same as English.
Same closed lips as ㅁ, but the nose is shut, so pressure builds.
Paper strip: a twitch, not a jump.
English “b” buzzes; English “p” at the start of a word blasts air. Korean ㅂ sits in between, and closer to neither than you think.
The only one so far where the air never stops. It is squeezed, not blocked.
You should be able to hold this sound for as long as your breath lasts. If it stops instantly, you are touching when you should be leaving a gap.
English “s” is tighter and stronger. Korean ㅅ is softer and breathier — which is exactly why it needs a tense partner, coming in lesson 5. Also: in front of ㅣ, the body of your tongue rises toward the hard palate and the hiss turns into a hushing sound. You do not have to do that on purpose; it happens because the vowel pulls your tongue there.
A blockage and a hiss glued together into one sound.
Try it slowly and you will feel two events in one letter: a block, then a scrape. If you only feel one, you are producing a plain stop.
English “j” buzzes from the very start. Korean ㅈ has no buzz at the beginning of a word — and, like ㄱ ㄷ ㅂ, it picks one up between vowels without you doing anything.
Nothing in your mouth blocks anything. The friction happens down in your throat.
Hand in front of your mouth: you should feel warm air, and nothing inside your mouth should have moved.
Between two vowels, Korean speakers weaken this to almost nothing and sometimes drop it entirely. That is normal speech, not sloppiness — lesson 10 covers when.
Every pair below changes only the consonant. If you can hear and produce these four, the place-of-articulation system is in your body.
Same tongue tip on the same ridge. The first sends air out the nose; the second traps it and releases.
The same thing again, up at the lips.
Same manner, different place: the back of the tongue versus the tip.
Continuous hiss versus block-then-hiss.
The HanDa app turns these lessons into speaking drills: read a word aloud and it tells you which sound slipped. Free for 7 days.