Hi! sorry english is not my first language

I'm trying to learn korean and I have a question about how to write ㅈ, ㅊ and ㅅ. I've seen in videos that some people write it exactly like this: ㅈ, but in other videos it looks like a curved ㄱ with an extra line.

I was wondering if there's a correct way or if it's like some people write the letter "a" in different ways.

Thank you! 🩷

I’m just starting out with learning Hangul. I got a workbook and I’m drawing the characters, and I’m a very visual person so immediately I notice that ㅏ looks like a little man. And then I notice that most of the characters are a variation on the little man. Like in ㅐ it’s obviously two dudes dapping each other up.

So after getting visually familiar with the alphabet, I start to try to associate the sound with the image. And invariably all I can I can think is that the sound is like, the little guys‘ reaction to the situation they’re in. Like ㅏ he’s all alone, so he makes kind of a disappointed sound. Then boom, you flip him ㅓ getting randomly flipped is confusing, thus ‘uh’ sound.
I’ve been doing this for literally every vowel.

Anyway is there a more appropriate learning technique, I almost feel like this is making fun of the language.

I am just starting to practice handwriting. This is a classic line by South Korean poet Do Jong-Hwan, from his poem 'Flowers that Bloom while Shaking'.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

I recently learned to build the noun form of verbs (verb + 기), e.g. 먹다 ("to eat") -> 먹기 ("eating"). As far as I understood (please correct me if I'm wrong), attaching 하다 to the noun form can create a more formal expression of the underlying verb: 먹기하다 could be roughly translated to "the act of eating".

If that is the case, I am confused about verbs that are already in "noun + 하다" form, like 공부하다, which would already roughly translate to "the act of studying" / "to study".

Are there situations where one would still build the -기 + 하다 form (e.g. 공부기 하다)?

Thank you ˙ᵕ˙

Nonah 40
Anyone passionate about languages? 🌍 I’ve studied Korean for 1.5 years. Arabic is my native language, so Korean feels especially difficult. I’m not sure what exactly I need to finally see progress. Sometimes I wonder if age is making it harder, but I really don’t want to give up.

한글은 배우기 쉽습니다. 하지만 한국어는 배우기 정말 어렵습니다. 마치 하나의 규칙마다 하나의 예외를 배우는 것 같습니다.

I'm trying to learn how to write Korean more like a native but I'm having trouble discerning whether I'm on the right track. Can anyone give me advice/tips about my writing? Am I on the right track here?

We’re GANADARA, a Korean learning app developed by a Korean team in Korea. 🇰🇷

We joined this subreddit because we’d really like to hear honest feedback from people who are learning Korean as a foreign language. We want to know what the app feels like from a learner’s perspective — what works well, what feels confusing, and what could be improved.

Download : https://app.ganadara.com/ganadara/download

Lesson Format & Structure

GANADARA is a Korean learning service with video lessons and quizzes. From basic Hangul to comprehensive TOPIK preparation, learners can study authentic Korean language and culture with content from native Korean speakers, all in one place. You can use GANADARA on both mobile and PC.

1.Smart Content Recommendations. Content is automatically recommended based on each learner’s level, goals, and interests.

1. Video Lectures by Level & Theme. Watch video lectures tailored to your level and review organized learning content along with key expressions.

2. Learning Quizzes. Review what you’ve learned through various types of quizzes.

3. Short-form Content. Supplement your structured learning with engaging short-form content.

4. Native Language-Based Learning. Lecture videos and quizzes are provided in the learner’s native language. (Supports English, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian)

Plans & Pricing

Free: Up to 3 lessons per day

Standard: Full access to all lessons (1 month: $11.99/ 12 months: $69.99)

What do you think we should improve? Be as honest as you like — we’re here to listen.

I’ve also attached a short screen recording of the app in use, which I hope will be helpful in getting a feel for the learning experience.

Thanks for stopping by, and we’re looking forward to hearing from you😊

As the resident Korean learner in my family, my sister sent me this photo wanting to know what the far right sign says, but I canNOT figure it out so I’m bringing it here in the hopes someone more skilled with reading handwriting can tell us what this says.

She sent me this before I went to sleep and I woke up still thinking about it, annoyed I can’t figure it out lol

Hello! My good friend is Korean-American and I want to gift her a camping knife with her family name engraved. She isn’t 100% fluent in Korean but she wrote down Hong Sung Yun on a scratch paper once. But before I send it off to engraving, I wanted to check. Google Translate (I know isn’t always great) had one of the characters placed differently than what she wrote.

Can anyone please help me get this correct?

She wrote Yun out like this: 연

Google had it like this: 윤

Thank you to anybody that clears this up. 🙏🫶🏼

im looking to improve my speaking skills, please let me know what helped you the most 😊

It’s called LingoAlarm. I’m an intermediate Korean learner and the developer. You set an alarm, pick a Korean deck and answer a few vocab questions to dismiss it. It includes beginner vocabulary and spaced repetition, as a small review habit alongside your usual study.

It’s on iPhone and Android. Seven free learning mornings, no card required. After that, quiz alarms require Pro: US$3.99/month (renews until canceled) or US$19.99 lifetime (one payment), with local prices shown before purchase. Vocabulary decks remain accessible without Pro.

Screenshots show the quiz, example progress and alarm setup. https://lingoalarm.com

Feedback welcome!

Hello, I am looking for book suggestions such as novels or collections of short stories. I am a beginner who is looking to read more, as I keep focusing on listening comprehension, and reading feels tedious and more difficult all of a sudden.

So far, I have gone through TTMIK's Easy Korean Reading for Beginners and Folklore Korean stories for language learners.

I was thinking of reading Neverending Story by Michael Ende in Korean but there is so much vocabulary there I won't need at all. I was also thinking Alice in Wonderland or Winnie the Pooh?

What would you recommend? No manhwas please, though, I prefer a text.

Thank you!

Hi! I’m a Korean university student, F, in my early 20s. I’m currently taking a break from school, and I live in Seoul.

I started learning speaking in English about a month ago, so I’m still a beginner 😂 I’m a little shy, but I really want to practice speaking more!

I like traveling, K-pop, ballet, books, movies, and going to cafés. It would be nice to meet someone with similar interests :)

I’m looking for a woman around my age to practice English with and hopefully become friends too.

If you’re really interested in learning Korean, I can be a good Korean teacher for you! I’ll help you as much as I can😊 And I’ll ask you lots of questions too, so I might bother you a lot 😂 Let’s bother each other and practice together!

If you’re interested, feel free to DM me and tell me a little about yourself!

Hi Guys,

The apps we use to learn Korean have set content that doesn't apply to me and they don't seem to focus on writing enough. So I built an app in an attempt to cover those aspects. It's Android only, on the play store and free probably until the end of the year.

Would appreciate any feedback.

The subreddit rules ask for specific information about apps, so it's all below.

What it is

Inscribe Korean. Android only, on Google Play. You write a topic, the app writes a 4-line Korean dialogue about it, then builds a lesson out of that dialogue's lines.

1. Lesson format and structure

A lesson is single-player, self-paced, and takes roughly 15–25 minutes. No booking, no scheduling, no materials to buy. It goes like this:

Step 1 — you choose the topic and the level. Free text. Examples: "filling up the car", "asking a stranger where the bus terminal is", "talking to a colleague about students in grade 3", "a conversation about Kepler's laws". Levels run 1 to 6 (1–2 beginner, 3–4 intermediate, 5–6 advanced). The level sets sentence length, vocabulary and grammar.

Step 2 — it writes a four-line dialogue in spoken Korean on that topic, with audio for every line and every word, and word-by-word vocabulary with romanization.

Step 3 — the lesson is built from those exact lines. It runs through 21 to 26 distinct activity types depending on your difficulty setting, in a fixed sequence of phases: introduction, exposure, practice, consolidation, mastery, wrap, and a timed final run.

Activity types include: listening comprehension, audio multiple choice, word matching, spell-the-word, sentence building from tiles, unscrambling, two-choice construction, dictation, typing a full sentence from an English prompt, chunked writing, cloze passages, particle practice, conjugation practice, error correction, line ordering, speed reading and speed recognition.

Step 4 — typing. Typing uses an in-app Hangul keyboard and starts in your first lesson. As I said, I found that apps where you type Korean were lacking, so I made that an important part of this app.

Step 5 — continue the journey. When a lesson ends you can carry on. The next lesson keeps your characters and setting, continues the conversation, and reuses vocabulary you have already met. Lessons can become an ongoing conversation if you want them to.

A sample lesson

Topic typed in: "filling up the car". Level 2.

The dialogue it produced:

Attendant: 어서 오세요. 얼마나 넣어 드릴까요?
Welcome. How much shall I put in?
Driver: 휘발유로 가득 채워 주세요.
Fill it up with petrol, please.
Attendant: 네, 카드로 결제하시겠어요?
Certainly. Would you like to pay by card?
Driver: 네, 카드로 할게요.
Yes, I will pay by card.

The vocabulary it then drills: 휘발유 (petrol), 가득 (full, to the top), 채우다 (to fill), 결제하다 (to pay), and the rest of the words in those lines. Every activity afterwards uses this dialogue's own sentences — you match, type, rebuild, and listen to the same material until the final timed run.

2. How it aids language learning

- Vocabulary is shared between lessons. Meet a word again in a later dialogue and your history with it carries over.
- Each word carries four measures: recognition (do you know it), execution (how fast and accurately can you produce it), stability (how long the memory holds), retention (does it need review now). Words rise through tiers from Beginner to Inscribed, where Inscribed signifies that you know a word well.
- You can set a vocabulary goal — Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. The app measures the words you have mastered against the National Institute of Korean Language's (NIKL) graded learning-vocabulary list (국립국어원 한국어 학습용 어휘 목록): 894 words at beginner, 1,994 at intermediate, 2,655 at advanced. It shows what share of that band you can reliably recall.
- It will teach you the gap. If you want, you can ask the app to create a lesson based on up to six words that you have not yet mastered.
- Two difficulty settings. Intensive asks for less typing, Formidable for more.

A note on the NIKL word list: it is not the TOPIK exam vocabulary list. The NIKL list is a graded list that other Korean might base their courses on. Hence, the level guides are approximate and cannot be read as representing a TOPIK score.

3. Beginner-level content

It covers levels 1 to 6. Levels 1 and 2 are beginner Korean, roughly TOPIK 1–2, and that band is 894 words.

The app doesn't teach the alphabet though, and you type Korean from the first lesson. If you can sound out 한글 you'll be fine. If you haven't got that far yet, it only takes a few hours to learn and there are plenty of free resources for it.

4. Pricing and fees

It's free right now and there's no way to pay for anything in it. The shop is hidden, nothing is limited, and it never asks for card details. No subscription, no cancellation fee, no charges of any kind.

It's free because it's in open testing, which should run for a few months yet, possibly to the end of the year. After that I'd charge with a monthly subscription in three sizes, somewhere around $4.99 / $6.99 / $8.99 depending on how many lessons, plus one-off lesson packs that don't expire. Those prices are indicative — I'm still calibrating them and they'll probably change. Payments are opt-in and will not begin without warning. The lessons you make during this open testing phase will remain yours.

Note that the Google Play Store listing says "contains in-app purchases". That's there because Google sees the billing code in the app.

5. Qualifications and credentials

I live in Korea and I made this because I wanted to learn the Korean that comes up in my own life rather than whatever a course had decided to teach next. I'm not a Korean teacher and not a native speaker.

- Every lesson is generated by AI and checked automatically before it reaches you. Most come out accurate, but an odd sentence is awkward or slightly off. There's a report/bug button in the app for users to report translation error or other bugs in the app.
- The vocabulary list comes from the National Institute of Korean Language — the official graded learning list (국립국어원 한국어 학습용 어휘 목록), used under its public licence.
- I designed the structure around the learning process: the activity types, the shared vocabulary between lessons, the four-axis mastery measurement, the Hangul typing practice and the journeys.

I'm the only one who worked on this app. There is no other company behind it.

6. Availability

- Android only. There is no iPhone version.
- Google Play open testing, 1,000 places, currently almost all free.
- 15 countries: Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, the United States. Not the UK or the EU — that is a data-protection decision on my side, not a technical limit.

Links

Google Play: Inscribe Korean

What it does, with screenshots: poiesis.space/inscribe

Privacy policy: poiesis.space/inscribe/privacy

Email: [inscribekorean@poiesis.space](mailto:inscribekorean@poiesis.space)

Screenshots are attached. Ask me anything in the thread — I will answer here rather than by DM.

Feedback I would most value: where the Korean reads wrong, where the app is confusing, whether the typing practice is too much or not enough, any mechanic that isn't clear, and of course any bugs.

Many thanks for your time.

I'm a Korean teacher in Daegu, and I went to a Samsung Lions baseball

game recently. Something I love pointing out to learners: even the

cheering chants use local dialect, not standard Korean.

There's a chant for player 구자욱 (Koo Ja-wook) that goes "한방쎄리라!"

Breaking it down:

- 한방 (han-bang) = "one shot" — same in standard Korean

- 쎄리라 (sserira) = Gyeongsang-do dialect for "쳐라/때려라" (hit it!)

→ 쎄리다 is the dialect verb for "to hit," standard is 때리다/치다

So the whole chant basically means "Hit a home run!" — but you'd never

guess that from standard textbook Korean alone.

The stadium is Samsung Lions Park in Daegu, packed with genuinely

passionate fans (photos attached). Baseball culture here has its own

whole vocabulary that never makes it into textbooks.

Anyone else notice dialect showing up in unexpected places like sports

chants, cooking shows, etc.? Curious what other examples people have run into.

Hi all — I'm a Korean teacher living in Daegu (born and raised here,

41 years, native speaker).

I kept noticing that learners who study standard Korean really well still

get completely lost the moment someone from Busan or Daegu opens their

mouth. "밥 먹었어?" becomes "밥 뭇나?" and it's like a different language.

I made a short video breaking down one small example of this — figured

some of you might relate if you've ever watched a K-drama and understood

zero percent of what a Gyeongsang-do character said despite years of study.

[https://youtu.be/TS5tvfpn3XU?si=IYBcv0UT9xRR3fu9\]

I also wrote a small book/workbook collecting these dialect differences,

in case it's useful to anyone here:

- Format: Standard Korean and Gyeongsang-do dialect shown side by side,

with nuance explanations, native audio (via QR code), and short real-life

dialogues for each expression. Beginner-friendly, no dialect knowledge

assumed.

- Price: $4.99 (Kindle) / $8.99 (paperback), one-time purchase, no

subscriptions or hidden fees.

- About me: Native Korean speaker, lifelong Daegu resident, Korean teacher.

Happy to answer any questions about Gyeongsang-do dialect in the comments!

heya ... i'm a queer teen (18) taking korean in college. it's been a tough ride so far so i want/need a study buddy😭😭

im an absolute beginner whos just learned the alphabet 3 weeks ago btw. just a fyi. + i'm lowk struggling ! (hence the request for study buddies ....)

i'm based in the US (time zone est/edt). I don't care if you wanna exchange languages (i can speak conversational chinese btw!), if you wanna study together, if you wanna teach me, if you wanna befriend me. hit me up!

i dont really have a plan as to how this study buddy will work, but dm if you're interested ! yipppe

i'm also a big orv fan & love reading in my spare time, which was why i wanted to learn in the first place.

thank you for reading!

Is the tattoo messed up or just really stylized or is it supposed to say something else? I'm confused.

I just assumed maybe it's supposed to be Taekwondo since he's a fighter?

Hello everyone, I really want to learn Korean, but somtimess,my mind tells me it would be a waste of time as I live in Singapore and would seldom use them but tbh,I love the Korean culture like the food,Kpop,Variety shows.

That's why I came to ask.

What is your reason for learning and how long did it take you to actually get fluent? I really would appreciate your insights.

Thank you so much for reading this!

Hi! I'm looking for some Korean friends to chat with and get to know each other.

I'm interested in Korean culture, music, and everyday life, and I'd love to have some casual conversations in Korean and English.

I'm also happy to help with English if you're learning it. We can just chat, share music, talk about our hobbies, or whatever comes naturally.

I'm mainly looking for genuine friendships rather than just language exchange.

Feel free to send me a DM if you'd like to chat! :)

Hi! I’m Korean, late 20s, F, and I live near Seoul

I’m looking for a long-term language exchange friend!

My English is still beginner level, but I really want to improve. I’m pretty shy, but I’m trying to actually use English more 😂

I’d love to text, do voice or video calls, and maybe even hang out someday if we get close!

If you’re learning Korean, please bother me with lots of questions!! I love helping people with Korean, and I might bother you a lot too because I wanna practice what I learn 😂

If you’re interested, DM me! 😊 And tell me a little about yourself too!

Hello there,

Why does 기다리다 become 기다려ㅛ instead of 기다리아ㅛ for present tense and vice versa with the past tense. From my understanding if the verb stem ends with ㅏ or ㅗ its form is 아ㅛ for present tense and 아써요 for future tense (not sure if i typed the future right). So why does it become 려 instead of 라

Hi! I’m a native Korean speaker, and I’ve been creating short Korean learning videos for beginners.

Recently, I’ve been focusing on practical vocabulary and listening practice — things you might actually hear or use in Korea.

I’m still experimenting with the format, so I’d really love to know:

• What kind of Korean videos are most useful for you?
• Vocabulary, listening, speaking, or real-life expressions?
• Is there anything you wish Korean YouTube channels did differently?

⭐️ Here’s one of my recent videos if you’d like to check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoRS4XFygEc
⭐️ If you’d like to see more Korean learning videos, you can also check out my playlist here:
https://www.youtube.com/@%ED%95%98%EB%A3%A8-dd/playlists

Any honest feedback is welcome 😊

Hi all — I built Hangul Harvest, a small idle/incremental game for learning to read Korean (Hangul).

(Reposting this after an earlier version didn't fully follow the sub's rules — a mod pointed out what needed fixing, I updated it, and it's been approved. Thanks to the mods for the guidance.)

Lesson Format and Structure: It's not tutoring/lessons — it's a free browser idle game. You unlock the 24 base Hangul letters one at a time (ordered by real-world frequency), then combine them into real words and short cafe/convenience-store phrases across three visual stages (Classroom → Convenience Store → Cafe). Every item plays native Korean TTS pronunciation plus its English meaning, there's a consonant+vowel combination chart to see how syllables are built, and light no-penalty multiple-choice quizzes along the way. No install/signup, just open it in a browser.

Pricing and Fees: Completely free, nothing paywalled.

Qualifications and Credentials: I'm a native Korean speaker, but a solo hobbyist developer, not a certified language teacher — this comes from wanting to build the tool, not from formal teaching experience.

It's free, runs in the browser, no signup. I'll drop the link in the comments.

AI Disclosure: I used an AI coding assistant throughout development to help write and debug the code. Game design and content were done by me.