Speak everyday Korean, one day at a time.
One short lesson a day, built on phrases you will actually use. The Hangul course, the charts and the travel guides are free too.
Start Day 1, free →Words and letters together, from your review schedule.
Words stick when you review them at the right moment.
Everyone forgets new words. Spaced repetition brings each one back just before you would lose it, and every time you remember it, the gap before the next review gets longer. It is the most useful habit on this site.
Ten minutes a day does more than two hours once a week. Without an account, your schedule is saved only in this browser, on this device.
Every language you learn lets you talk with millions more people. This site is here to make the first step, which is the hardest, take ten minutes a day instead of a term of evening classes.
Read why I built this →Learning phrases in romanisation is the most common way to stall. Hangul is the easiest part of Korean and the best place to begin. Here is the order that works, and how much time each step takes.
Hangul is an alphabet, not a set of characters, and it was designed in the 1440s to be learned quickly. Forty letters, most of them built from a handful of shapes that picture the mouth making the sound. Do the free course, a few letters a day, and within a fortnight you can read any Korean word aloud. Skip it and you will still be reading romanisation, badly, six months from now.
These are the phrases you would actually use: hello and thank you, giving your name, ordering food, asking a price, asking where something is. Each day covers a few of them, explains why they work the way they do, then quizzes you. You can start alongside the Hangul course. Do not binge three at once to get ahead. The day in between is doing half the work, because that is when things stick.
Spaced repetition is a flashcard deck that works out when to show you each word. You get 15 new ones a day, the useful ones first and mixed across categories, and each word comes back just before you would have forgotten it. If you only do one thing on this site, make it this. Ten minutes a day beats two hours on a Sunday, and it is not close.
Korean spelling shows what a word is made of, and the sounds change where the blocks meet: 한국말 is said hangungmal, 감사합니다 is gamsahamnida. It is the reason people who can read Hangul still cannot follow it spoken. The sound changes course takes one family of changes a day. Start it once the Hangul course is done, alongside the daily lessons.
About 25 minutes, split three ways. One sitting or spread across the day, it makes little difference. Mornings are slightly better for the cards, because anything you get wrong comes back later the same day.
On a bad day, do the reviews and nothing else. Even four minutes keeps the schedule intact. Skip a day and tomorrow’s pile is bigger, which is how people end up staring at 200 cards and quietly giving up.
Different plan, with one thing kept. Do the Hangul course anyway, because it is quick and every menu and most signs are in Hangul only. Then go straight to Situations: phrasebook guides for the restaurant, the subway, the café, the convenience store. Keep romanisation on, and do the daily lessons with whatever time is left. Twenty phrases you can actually say will do more for you than a hundred you can only read about.
Eight courses. Start with the Hangul course, all 40 letters in ten days, then the daily lessons, 90 short days of the phrases you would actually say. Sound changes explains why spoken Korean does not always match its spelling. Five more cover numbers, food and cafes, K-pop and drama, webtoons and variety shows.
Around them, Learn holds the Hangul chart and the vocabulary and grammar references, and Practice has the spaced-repetition card deck and handwriting drills. Romanisation switches on and off wherever it appears.
Jump straight to the situation you need, no course required.
Halloween in Korea is a costume night out, not an evening for children, and since the Itaewon crush of 2022 it is quieter and closely managed.
More than you would expect. The whole Hangul course, every chart, all 559 words, the grammar reference, the situation guides, the printables, days 1 to 7 of the daily lessons and the first three days of every other course, with no account and no card.
A free account adds days 8 to 30 of the daily lessons. You pay only for day 31 onwards and the rest of each course.
Part of the Learn Languages Online network
Four of the eight language sites are open, each with the same courses, spaced repetition and situation guides. The rest are being built.