Hello everyone! Rini here. Today we will learn how to read & write the basic vowels in Korean — ㅇ,ㅏ,ㅣ. Unlike Japanese & Chinese, Korean only has 24 characters in the alphabet. We use these characters in different combinations to form syllables. Each block of characters equals one syllable. Here is an important rule you need to remember. Each block means one consonant and one vowel. You'll see what I mean what we start going through some of the characters. 

In Korean, there are 10 vowels and 14 consonants.

The 10 vowels: ㅣ ㅏ ㅓ ㅑ ㅕ ㅡ ㅗ ㅜ ㅠ ㅛ

The 14 consonants: ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ 

We will start off by learning the vowels. 

The first one is ㅣ[ ee ] When you are saying this word, you are actually saying a korean word. The Korean word is teeth. 

So when you write ㅣ, you need one consonant. But with this vowel, there is no consonant, so we add a place holder. ㅇ The outcome would be → 이 So whenever you have a vowel on it's own, this place holder comes before it.

Now it's time to learn ㅏ[ ah ]

As you practice the pronunciation, try to associate the vowel with a charatcer. Writing it while sayng it really helps. 

Let's combine these two. 아 + 이 = 아이 [ah-ee] which means child.