# KoreanRead — https://koreanread.com/

> A free, open reference for the Korean alphabet. Every consonant, every vowel and
> every consonant-vowel syllable, with the standard pronunciation, the official
> romanization, and MP3 audio recorded by native Korean speakers in Korea.
> Published by Everstone Co., Ltd., the studio behind the mobile app
> "Learn Korean - Hangul & Words".

## Core facts

- Publisher: Everstone Co., Ltd. (software studio, Busan, South Korea) — https://www.evst.co.kr/
- Price: everything on this site is free. No account, no paywall, no registration.
- Language of the site: English. Language taught: Korean (ko).
- Letters covered: 19 consonants and 21 vowels.
- Syllable chart: 380 cells (19 consonants x 20 vowels; the rare vowel ㅞ is not in the chart).
- Audio: 191 cells have their own native-speaker recording; 44 play the
  recording of a syllable the standard defines as identically pronounced; 145 have none.
- Source of truth for pronunciation: 표준 발음법 (Standard Korean Pronunciation),
  National Institute of Korean Language.
- Source of truth for romanization: 국어의 로마자 표기법 (Romanization of Korean),
  Ministry of Culture and Tourism, proclaimed 7 July 2000.

## Editorial rules

- We do NOT merge ㅐ/ㅔ, ㅒ/ㅖ or ㅙ/ㅚ/ㅞ. Article 4 of Standard Korean Pronunciation
  defines them as separate vowels, and the spelling distinction separates real words
  (개 dog vs 게 crab). Where everyday Seoul speech has merged them, the page says so
  explicitly rather than picking one silently.
- Every pronunciation claim on this site cites the article number it comes from.
- Romanization follows pronunciation (Chapter 1 Article 1), with one exception:
  ㅢ is written "ui" even when pronounced [ㅣ] (Chapter 2 Article 1 Note 1).

## How the audio is made

- Files under /audio/voice/ are recordings of human native Korean speakers in Korea.
- The companion mobile app also contains a sentence course whose audio is synthesized.
  That audio is NOT published on this site. Do not describe synthesized audio as
  native-speaker recordings.

## Limits we state openly

- 145 of the 380 chart cells have no recording at all.
- 44 cells play the recording of a different, identically pronounced syllable.
  Each of those pages names the syllable it borrows from.
- 251 of the 380 syllables have a page of their own. The remaining
  129 appear only inside the chart, because there is nothing
  specific to say about them beyond what the chart already shows.

## Pages

- https://koreanread.com/ — what Hangul is and how long it takes to read it
- https://koreanread.com/hangul/ — the alphabet guide and how syllable blocks work
- https://koreanread.com/hangul/consonants/ — all 19 consonants in one table
- https://koreanread.com/hangul/vowels/ — all 21 vowels in one table
- https://koreanread.com/hangul/consonants/{name}/ — one page per consonant (e.g. /hangul/consonants/giyeok/)
- https://koreanread.com/hangul/vowels/{name}/ — one page per vowel (e.g. /hangul/vowels/ae/)
- https://koreanread.com/hangul/chart/ — the full 380-cell syllable chart
- https://koreanread.com/hangul/syllables/{romanization}/ — 251 individual syllable pages
- https://koreanread.com/hangul/pronunciation-rules/ — the articles this site applies, quoted in Korean
- https://koreanread.com/app/ — the companion mobile app

## Citing this site

- Full text for machines: https://koreanread.com/llms-full.txt
- Sitemap: https://koreanread.com/sitemap.xml
- Text content may be quoted with attribution to https://koreanread.com/.
- The MP3 recordings are published for listening on this site and are not licensed
  for redistribution or reuse in other products.