More consonants: ㅂ ㅅ ㅈ ㅎ

A box with horns, and a tent

You know 마: the box ㅁ is m. Now look at 바. Its first letter is the same box with the two side walls sticking up above the top. That letter, ㅂ, is made with the lips like m, but it stops the air and lets it go: a soft b, close to a gentle p at the start of a word.

The two-legged tent ㅅ in 사 is s. It is lighter and a little breathier than English s. Do not hiss it.

Put a bar on the tent; put a hat on the circle

Add a flat bar on top of ㅅ and you get ㅈ, as in 자. It is romanized j. At the start of a word it has less buzz than English j and falls between “j” and “ch”. The lips stay relaxed, not pushed out.

The last shape is the circle wearing a hat: ㅎ, as in 하. Unlike the bare circle ㅇ, this letter is never silent at the start of a block. It is a plain breath of air, h.

In many typefaces ㅈ is drawn like a 7 with an extra leg. It is the same letter as the tent with a bar.

The same letter, a softer sound before ㅣ

Play both. The first letter is ㅅ in each, but 시 does not sound like “see”. Before the vowel ㅣ, ㅅ slides toward “sh”, so 시 is close to English “she”, said with flat lips and less hiss.

Nothing changes in the spelling, and there is nothing to memorise: your tongue is already moving toward ㅣ, and that movement makes the sound. The romanization still writes it si.

Words with the new letters

Read each word block by block before you play it. 바다, 모자, 지도, 바지 and 가수 are built entirely from letters you know.

버스 is the English word “bus”. A Korean syllable cannot end in an s sound, so the borrowed word gains a second block with the vowel ㅡ: beo-seu. That ㅡ is very short and light, but it is a real beat. You will meet this pattern again in many borrowed words.

Six more, two of them essential

아버지 is “father”, the partner of 어머니. 주스 is another borrowed word with the light ㅡ at the end. 도시 ends in the “shi” sound you just learned.

Keep two of these for the next unit. 저 means “I”. It is the humble word for yourself and the one to use with people you do not know well. 어디 means “where”. Both have the vowel ㅓ: lips unrounded.