My goal is to learn all Hangul letters and their combinations in order to understand words I encounter and speak more fluently Korean. For this reason I have made the following, it is my own personal list of the basic letters according to the wiki I read:
Consonants:
ㄱ, ㄲ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄸ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅃ, ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅇ, ㅈ, ㅉ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅎ
Vowels:
ㅏ, ㅐ, ㅑ, ㅒ, ㅓ, ㅔ, ㅕ, ㅖ, ㅗ, ㅘ, ㅙ, ㅚ, ㅛ, ㅜ, ㅝ, ㅞ, ㅟ, ㅠ, ㅡ, ㅢ, ㅣ
Although even with these as a guide, I am unable to account for many Korean words such as 만화. Which brings me to ask:
- Why is 만 not in the list of words I have learned?
- Which basic Hangul letters am I missing in my list?
(By basic, I mean they are the basic syllabic blocks for words in Korean and I consider them equivalent to an alphabet.)
I noticed 마 is also not listed in the basic tables and my list. According to Wikitionary it is a syllabic block made up of ㅁ and ㅏ, then why is it used as a basic letter in 마 + ㄴ = 만?
This leads me to wonder, how do I determine the following:
- How many non-basic letters are used to form other non-basic letters?
- When 마 and 만 or any other non-basic letter is a consonant or a vowel?
I realize I have a lot of questions, generally though I would appreciate if someone could clarify for a beginner learner how many Hangul letters there are to learn and where to learn more about them.