90 Day Challenge L PDF

90 Minute Korean Reading Challenge
_________________________________
Introduction
THE 90 MINUTE CHALLENGE
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes
to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes
to his heart.
NELSON MANDELA
The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one
language.
EZRA POUND
Korean culture is on the rise: worldwide music and pop

culture success, rapid economic growth and some of the
worlds biggest and most relevant companies have put
Korea on the map in a big way!
As the world becomes more connected to Korea
through pop culture and the economy, the Korean
language will become increasingly important.
Copyright 2013 90 Day Korean. Get free training and rapid learning resources at:
90DayKorean.com
And the best way to start learning Korean is to learn to

read Hangeul, the Korean writing system.
Thats where this challenge comes in.
Did you know that there are fewer Korean characters
than there are letters in the English alphabet?
Korean has 14 vowels and 10 consonants.
Unlike Japanese or Chinese, which have thousands of
characters and each can have 10, 15 or more strokes, the
most complex Korean character has only five strokes.
On top of this, Korean has a grammar structure that can
be mastered by understanding some basic rules.
This makes Korean a great language for rapid learning,
and it all starts with knowing the Korean characters
the basic building blocks of the language.
This guide makes use of psychological techniques which
are designed for more rapid encoding and memorization
of the characters.
90DayKorean.com
It covers the how, what and why of Korean language

learning, and it is the only guide of its kind.
This is Korean, broken down and simplified. This is
language learning for the everyday language learner.
Lets get started.
Set your stopwatch, because the challenge is to get
through this guide in 90 minutes or less!
There are some exercises along the way to test your
learning, and the time required to complete these
questions is included in the estimated chapter times.
You can print out this guide and write your answers
directly on the paper, or have a notebook or piece of
paper handy.
Go through at a brisk pace, but ensure proper encoding
and memorization along the way.
At the end, the ultimate test is being able to read nine
words in Korean.
Ready. Set. Go.
90DayKorean.com
1
________________________________________________________________________
CONSONANTS (25 MINUTES)

The Korean language has both consonants and vowels
just like English.
Lets learn the consonants to start.
First, lets take a look at the English alphabet. Instead of
looking at the actual letters, lets just look at the sounds
they make.
In doing so, we can find the closest equivalents in
Korean so that we can start to make associations.
In Korean, there are no F, R, V, or Z sounds, so lets
take them out.
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The rest of the sounds exist in the Korean

language; however, the Q, W, X and Y sounds:
a) Can only be made by combining two or
more sounds (ie., X = K+ S),
OR
b) Cannot be made without adding a vowel
sound after (ie., ya or yo)
So lets take these letters out too.
Finally, lets remove the English vowels, since

we are first focusing on the consonant sounds.
How many are left in red?
13.
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But we can group C and K together, since in

English, they make the same sound.
This leaves a total of 12.

Lets take a look at those 12 first. Since were
learning a new language and have never seen
these shapes before, it will be very difficult for
us just to memorize them. Therefore, we need
to link them to something already in our
minds in order to create an association.
Lets do this using a visual learning technique
to associate the new characters with pictures
and sounds we already know.
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The first letter of the English word in the

picture has the same sound as the Korean
character.
This will help to start to create the
associations.
The character , which has a sound similar to
B in English, looks like a bed with a post at
either end.
Make this association in your mind. Write it
down and commit it to memory.
Likewise, the character could be seem as a

doorframe or the panels on a door.
Correspondingly, this character makes the
sound D.
90DayKorean.com
The Korean character has the appearance

of a gun and sounds similar to an English G.
The same goes for (H), which looks like a
man with a hat, and (J) which could be seen
as a jug with a spout at the top.
Try creating these associations now.
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Great work! Lets move on.
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Next is the character , which has 5 strokes

and could be compared to the rungs of a ladder.
Its sound is most similar to an English L and
can be made the same way by pressing down
with your tongue.
Finally, there are the characters , , and ,

which have the sounds M, N and S
respectively.
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The is a sqaure box like a message on a

phone or a piece of mail.
The points up and to the right like a
compass pointing to the north (and the east at
the same time).
The is like a seashell or clam, having only
two strokes which slightly overlap.
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How are we doing so far? Lets do an exercise.
_________________________________
Exercise 1
THE CONSONANTS
Match the character on the left with the English word on the right
that has the corresponding sound in its first letter.
1.
2.
3.
a. hat
b. jug
c. bed
4.
5.
6.
d. gun
e. northeast
f. mail
7.
g. door
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8.
9.
h. seashell
i. ladder
Answers: 1. g 2. d 3. c 4. i 5. a 6. f 7. b 8. e 9. h
2
________________________________________________________________________
ASPIRATED CONSONANTS
(15 MINUTES)
Now, lets take a look at four of the sounds we
just learned.
B, D, G and J.
Make each of these sounds now. B. D. G.
J.
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What if we made them stronger, aspirating as

we spoke them? What sound would we then
make?
For B, a more aspirated sound forcing out
more air would make P sound. How about D? It
would result in a T sound. T. Try it now.
And G? A K sound, like a C or K. In English,
these two sounds are very similar. Try saying
Ive got a cot five times.
The C is really just an aspirated G.
Finally, if you aspirated a J, it would result in a
ch sound. Try saying cheap Jeep several
times and youll notice how similar the sounds
are.
Lets match up the non-aspirated English
sounds with their aspirated sound pairings.
See how similar these sounds really are?
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When we do the same in Korean, well see

some visual similarities in the characters,
which can help greatly for memorization.
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Its almost as if all we did was add a small line

to each consonant to create the aspirated
equivalent.
The next four Korean characters are called the
aspirated consonants, and are similar in sound
to their non-aspirated counterparts.
Lets make a visual association as well to
really drill them in.
90DayKorean.com
The (K) could be compared to a key, while

the , which has a T sound, could be
associated with teeth (like the ones in your
mouth or the teeth of a fork).
Remember math class? I hope so!

3.14159265359.
Whats that number? Pi! And the Korean
character with a similar sound to P looks very
90DayKorean.com
similar to the symbol for pi. That makes it

easy to remember.
So there we have it. The first 12 characters

learned!
But we said there were a total of 14

consonants in Korean, so what are the last two?
90DayKorean.com
One of them is special, because it doesnt have

a direct equivalent to an English letter. Instead,
it represents a sound in English.
, the character representing the ch sound
in English (choose), looks like a church with
a steeple at the top. We can associate it this
way, or remember it as an aspirated J () and
add an extra line.
Time to test what we just learned.
_________________________________
Exercise 2
90DayKorean.com
THE ASPIRATED CONSONTANTS

Again, match the character on the left with the English word on
the right that has the corresponding sound in its first letter(s). Be
careful, as this time the regular consonants are mixed in.
1.
2.
a. door
b. key
3.
4.
5.
c. jug
d. pi
e. teeth
6.
7.
8.
f. gun
g. bed
h. church
Answers: 1. a 2. f 3. g 4. e 5. d 6. h 7. c 8. b

90DayKorean.com
Ok, so thats 13 Korean characters already!

Youre more than halfway there.
The last consonant in Korean is really just a
placeholder, and makes no sound by itself
when placed in front of another character.
Nonetheless, it is considered a consonant.
Just like in math, where we use 0 as a
placeholder, in Korean, the placeholder
character () is a round shape.
For now, thats all you need to remember.

When you learn the vowels and add them in
next to the placeholder character, youll know
what sound to make based on the vowel.
90DayKorean.com
However, if the character ends a particular

syllable, it is pronounced ng like in -ing in
English. This is a very important rule to
remember, otherwise we would just skip over
the consonant, assuming it had no sound.
This will make more sense later. Check your
stopwatch!
Lets move on to the vowels for now.
3
________________________________________________________________________
VOWELS (20 MINUTES)

In Korean there are ten basic vowels that you
need to learn, from which you can create all
other vowel sounds.
90DayKorean.com
But before we get into that, we need to do a

basic review of English grammar.
In English, we have short and long vowel
sounds.
Short A: cat
Long A: mate
Short E: bet
Long E: seen
Short I: bit
Long I: might
Short O: dog
Long O: bone
Short U: bus
Long U: flute
All of these sounds exist or can be made using
Korean characters except for the short I sound
(this just doesnt exist in Korean and is very
difficult for Koreans to pronounce).
90DayKorean.com
The characters for the vowels are all pretty

easy! They are just lines.
The first four well learn are horizontal or
vertical lines with a perpendicular line in the
middle facing in a particular direction.
The only problem is that we need to remember

which way the perpendicular line points and
associate that character with the particular
vowel sound.
Lets use a little bit of psychology.
First, memorize the following acronym:
OLD iPOD NEW iPAD
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Now, imagine a cross in the middle

representing a timeline. Did you know the first
iPod came out in 2001? That makes it OLD.
The iPad came out in 2010, making it
comparatively NEW. Easy right?
Now listen carefully to the vowel SOUND in
each word.
Old. Long O sound. Oh.
iPod. Short O sound. Aw
New. Long U sound. Oo
iPad. Short A sound. A
Now recite Old iPod, new iPad working
counterclockwise around the circle.
90DayKorean.com
Good work!
Now, all we need to do is line up the character
in our minds.
The character with the line pointing up is
OLD and has the Long O sound.
The character pointing to the left has a Short
O sound like the O in iPod, but the character
pointing to the right has a Short A sound like
the A in iPad.
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Finally, the character pointing down has a

Long U sound like the EW in New.
Ok, not too bad. Commit these to memory.

Now, just like we added a line to some of the
consonants to make an aspirated sound, we
can add a line to the four vowels we just
learned to add a new sound.
Remember how we said we couldnt create a Y
sound with just one Korean character? Well,
we can create a Y sound in front of a vowel
sound when we add a line to the first four
vowels. This helps us create four new vowels.
90DayKorean.com
Therefore, if the vowel sounds we have so far

are:
We can now create the following sounds by

just adding a second line:
So, once you memorize the first four, the

second four are really easy. All you need to do
is double up the line and remember to add a Y
sound in front.
90DayKorean.com
Commit these to memory.

So, there are only ten Korean vowels and we
already know eight of them.
The last two are just lines as well.
Do you know how to say a little bit in French?
If you didnt already know, here is the shortest
French lesson youll ever need:
Un petit peux in French means a little bit.

Notice how the I in petit is not a short I, but
rather is a Long E sound, ee. The Korean
character with the same sound, , looks like
an I, making it easy to remember.
Also, notice the sound EU makes in peux.
This is the same sound as the last Korean
vowel, . Its just a horizontal line.
90DayKorean.com
Its time for another exercise to drill this in.
_________________________________
Exercise 3
THE VOWELS
Match the character on the left with the sound on the right.
90DayKorean.com
1.
2.
a. AW
b. OO
3.
4.
5.
c. YAH
d. OH
e. EU
6.
7.
8.
f. YAW
g. YOO
h. EE
Answers: 1. a 2. g 3. h 4. c 5. d 6. e 7. b 8. f

4
________________________________________________________________________
READING KOREAN (15 MINUTES)

Just like English, you read Korean right to left,
top to bottom. However, the characters go
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together, existing within small invisible

boxes, and each box can have up to four
characters. Each little box becomes a
syllable. Instead of reading right across, we
read one box at a time using the rule right to
left, top to bottom. Thats all there is to it!
This is the Korean word for hello.

In the first two boxes, there are two
characters on the top and one on the bottom.
Following our rule of left to right, top to
bottom, we would read the in the order 1, 2, 3
as shown above.
The same goes for the second syllable, or box,
but remember: the placeholder character here
is ending the syllable so it would have to be
pronounced ng.
90DayKorean.com
The third, fourth and fifth syllables are more

straightforward and are just read simply right
to left.
The word sounds like an-nyung-ha-sae-yo
when you read it correctly.
If you got the associations with the characters
and vowels down pat in the previous sections,
you can start to read some Korean words on
your own.
Lets try it out. Give it a try first, then check
your answers below.
How would you pronounce the following?
90DayKorean.com
For the first two, we would just read right to

left.
1. K for key + ah = Ka. This is the Korean
word for car.
2. N for northeast + aw = Naw. This means
you.
Now, for the third one, we just read right to
left for the first syllable, then top to bottom for
the second syllable.
That would make it:
90DayKorean.com
3. B for bed + ah = Bah plus B for bed +

oh. Bahbo. This is the Korean word for
stupid. If you can read these words
already, you are definitely not !
Now, remember the placeholder vowel that
doesnt make any sound if placed in front of a
vowel? Here are two general rules for writing:
Spelling-wise, a vowel cannot be
written without either a consonant or
the placeholder beforehand.
However, pronunciation-wise, if there is a
placeholder before the vowel, we just ignore
the placeholder and pronounce the vowel.
Lets try reading some more difficult words
and we can practice this. If you get stuck,
remember to ignore the placeholder if there is
one before a vowel and read top to bottom and
left to right.
90DayKorean.com
How did it go? Did you remember all of the

characters from the associations we made
before? Lets check.
4. Did you remember to ignore the
placeholder? Good. This one then becomes
oh for the first syllable and N for
northeast + eu + L for ladder.
Pronounced oh-neul, means today.
5. M for mail + ee = mee plus G for gun
+ oo + G for gun again. Migug is the
Korean word for U.S.A.
6. K for key + aw then P for pi + ee =
kaw pee, the Korean word for coffee.
90DayKorean.com
*Note. These are rough pronunciations and we

will learn a few more subtle pronunciation
rules in future lessons.
Congratulations, youre nearly there now.
5
________________________________________________________________________
TAKING IT A STEP FURTHER

(15 MINUTES)
We must mention that in Korean, tense or
strong consonants also exist.
But there is no need to learn any new
characters.
When you see a double consonant, all you
need to do is change the way you pronounce it
90DayKorean.com
slightly but doubling up the English consonant

youve already associated with the character.
There are only five of these tense or double
consonants, and here they are:
Easy right?
To pronounce them correctly, all you need to
do is tense up your tongue and pronounce the
sound a little harder with more force. For
example, imagine a bus was coming and your
friend was standing on the street.
You might yell: BUS!
90DayKorean.com
That B sound when you yell the word would

be more similar to the bb sound of the
character .
Not to worry, there will be more on
pronunciation in future lessons.
Now, if youre confident about whats come
before, then this part is going to fun.
We are going to combine vowels to make
different sounds.
Take a look here. What sound do you figure
these characters make?
They look a little familiar. Lets break them

down. The first one can be seen as the
character (ah) combined with the character
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(ee), while the second is just (yah)

combined with (ee).
When we pronounce them though, we dont

pronounce each sound individually, but rather
we just blend the sounds together.
Therefore, the first would become more like
ae which is pronounced like the e in the
word egg, while the second would become
yae like the ye in yesterday.
Note that these next two are actually
pronounced the same as the characters we just
learned.
Though you would probably work them out to
have a different sound in your head, they are
actually pronounced the same as the previous
two. Although some Koreans would say there
90DayKorean.com
is a subtle difference, it is not very apparent in

the younger generations. We can remember
them because the horizontal line(s) are just
shifted over to the left from the previous two
we just learned.
Commit these four new characters to memory.

Two of them make the sound ae and the
other two make the sound yae.
Theres one more we must learn before we
wrap up. Remember the last two vowels we
learned, which were just straight lines one
vertical and one horizontal?
Well, we can combine them to create a
different sound.
90DayKorean.com
Just remember we dont pronounce the

placeholder.
Therefore, this one becomes an eui sound,

which you need to pronounce really quickly to
get it right. Instead of two syllables eu +
ee, combine the sound into one syllable,
blending the ee into the preceding eu
sound. Imagine saying chop suey really fast,
with less emphasis on the oo and make it
more of an eu sound.
Thats all there is to it.
90DayKorean.com
Remember though, you would never see these

characters starting a syllable without a
placeholder or a consonant in front of them.
Now its time for one final reading test, with
three even harder words which make use of
what we just learned: tense or double
consonants, and the vowel combinations.
Give it a try, and dont be afraid to look back
at your notes to get them the first time through.
Answers are below.
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How did you do? Tough, right? Here are the

answers:
7. Again, ignore the placeholder. Therefore,
all there is here is the one sound, which
we just learned. Its the same as the
similar looking character combination, but
has the two horizontal lines shifted to the
left. Yae or Ye. This means yes in
Korean.
8. A bit tougher now, but break it down. The
first is a double door. Its the character
we associated with a door, but doubled up;
a tense consonant. Therefore Dd + o + ng
since the placeholder consonant ends the
box, or syllable. The second syllable is B
for boat + ae = bae. Ddong bae is a
funny Korean slang term, which means
pot belly (literally: poo belly)!
9. That difficult-to-pronounce combination of
+ (pronounced eui) plus J for jug +
ah = Eui-ja, meaning chair.
90DayKorean.com
Thats it! Click the stop button on your

stopwatch and record your time.
You are officially finished the 90 Minute
Challenge.
6
________________________________________________________________________
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Congratulations!
Weve learned all of the vowels and the
consonants, plus more sounds we can make by
putting them together.
As time goes by, you will no longer rely on the
associations we have created today and
reading Korean will become second nature!
90DayKorean.com
Armed with this knowledge, youre ready to

start tackling more lessons in Korean. When
you learn Korean in Korean, or at least while
thinking and writing using the characters, you
learn much more effectively.
Instead of trying to think in English and say
thats not how wed say it in English, you
start to recognize patterns and different ways
of communicating.
Its important to note that we have not learned
the proper Romanization here, just the sounds
that the characters make.
We will need to learn some more rules, like
when they subtly change in pronunciation
depending on where theyre located in the
word, and how to read Romanized Korean, but
all this will come with time!
For now, its time to celebrate. You passed the
challenge, and for that, you deserve a lot of
credit!
90DayKorean.com
So go back to www.90DayKorean.com and

post your time in the comments, and let us
know how you found the challenge.
Three winners who have completed the
challenge, regardless of time, will be selected
to win a free scholarship to the upcoming
release of the 90 Day Korean program! Plus,
well keep you updated on the release of more
free content.
Thanks for taking the challenge, and all the
best in your Korean language-learning journey!
Sincerely,
The 90 Day Korean Team
By the way, if you loved this guide,
youll love our new 90 Day Korean
Inner Circle. As a member, you will
receive lessons like this each week,
90DayKorean.com
PLUS accountability, daily challenges

and tasks for motivation and to keep
you on track, email support, grading
from Korean natives, and a whole lot
more. Its like an interactive community
for learning Korean all from the
comfort of your own home.
Sign up now:
http://www.90DayKorean.com/innercircle
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90 Minute Korean Reading Challenge

Korean culture is on the rise: worldwide music and pop

And the best way to start learning Korean is to learn to

It covers the how, what and why of Korean language

CONSONANTS (25 MINUTES)

The rest of the sounds exist in the Korean

Finally, lets remove the English vowels, since

But we can group C and K together, since in

This leaves a total of 12.

The first letter of the English word in the

Likewise, the character could be seem as a

The Korean character has the appearance

Great work! Lets move on.

Next is the character , which has 5 strokes

Finally, there are the characters , , and ,

The is a sqaure box like a message on a

How are we doing so far? Lets do an exercise.

What if we made them stronger, aspirating as

When we do the same in Korean, well see

Its almost as if all we did was add a small line

The (K) could be compared to a key, while

Remember math class? I hope so!

similar to the symbol for pi. That makes it

So there we have it. The first 12 characters

But we said there were a total of 14

One of them is special, because it doesnt have

Time to test what we just learned.

THE ASPIRATED CONSONTANTS

Ok, so thats 13 Korean characters already!

For now, thats all you need to remember.

However, if the character ends a particular

VOWELS (20 MINUTES)

But before we get into that, we need to do a

The characters for the vowels are all pretty

The only problem is that we need to remember

Now, imagine a cross in the middle

Finally, the character pointing down has a

Ok, not too bad. Commit these to memory.

Therefore, if the vowel sounds we have so far

We can now create the following sounds by

So, once you memorize the first four, the

Commit these to memory.

Un petit peux in French means a little bit.

Its time for another exercise to drill this in.

READING KOREAN (15 MINUTES)

together, existing within small invisible

This is the Korean word for hello.

The third, fourth and fifth syllables are more

For the first two, we would just read right to

3. B for bed + ah = Bah plus B for bed +

How did it go? Did you remember all of the

*Note. These are rough pronunciations and we

TAKING IT A STEP FURTHER

slightly but doubling up the English consonant

That B sound when you yell the word would

They look a little familiar. Lets break them

(ee), while the second is just (yah)

When we pronounce them though, we dont

is a subtle difference, it is not very apparent in

Commit these four new characters to memory.

Just remember we dont pronounce the

Therefore, this one becomes an eui sound,