We have some great news for you: With a little knowledge you can easily reduce the amount of vowels that you need to learn.
In Hangul there are 21 vowels you have to learn, but in the “Alphabet learning tricks” we will uncover a few “tricks” to help you reduce them by instead remembering a few rules!
What you will see is that several of the vowels are based on the same primary vowels with some additional elements!
Rule 1: Adding “short” pins adds an “y” sound!
If you add a short pin next to the vowel it adds an “y” sound in front of the vowel!
Like this:
A becomes YAㅏ→ㅑ
EO becomes YEO ㅓ→ㅕ
E becomes YE ㅔ→ㅖ
U becomes YU ㅜ→ ㅠ
O becomes YO ㅗ→ㅛ
Rule 2: Adding O or U in front of a wovel gives them a W sound
The most complicated parts of dipthongs are the inconsistency.
Lets look at the patterns though…
Adding an O in front of some vowels gives them a W sound:
WA ㅘ
WAE ㅙ
EXCEPTION: However adding O to I is an exception because ㅚ is OE and NOT WE. You could say that the pronouncation is alike to WE, but OE is the correct romanization!
Rule 3: Adding a “long pin” adds an “e” to the sound
This doesnt have as many applications mainly just to the A vowel.
Just remember that a “long pin” to an ㅏ(a) adds an “E” afterwards!
So if you add both a short and a long pin to an A it becomes YAE !
