This Guide's Script Policy

Before you meet hundreds of example sentences across this guide, it is worth thirty seconds to learn exactly how each one is laid out — because a small, silent choice about romanization is responsible for an enormous amount of learner confusion, and this guide makes that choice explicit so you never have to guess. Every worked example in this guide is presented as three aligned rows, and each row has a job.

The three rows

Read that example top to bottom:

1. The target — Hangul only. This is the real Korean, in the real script, with natural Korean word-spacing and nothing else mixed in. This bold top line is also the only thing the audio button reads aloud. It is what you should be reading.
2. The romanization — a space-segmented Revised Romanization (RR) in muted italics. This is a pronunciation aid, and only that. It is display-only; the audio never reads it.
3. The translation — idiomatic English. Not word-for-word, but what a native speaker would actually be saying. Any register note (informal, formal, and so on) goes here, in parentheses.

The order encodes the priority. Hangul is the point; romanization is the safety net; English is the meaning.

We romanize the sound, not the spelling

This is the most important ruling on the page, and the one most resources get inconsistently. Korean has systematic sound-change rules: letters shift their pronunciation depending on their neighbors. That leaves any romanizer a choice — spell the letters as written, or spell the sound as pronounced. This guide always spells the sound, because the romanization exists to teach you correct pronunciation, and spelling the letters would teach you a pronunciation nobody actually uses.

Watch what that means in practice:

Letter-by-letter, 좋아요 contains an ㅎ, so a spelling-based romanizer might write "joh-a-yo." But the ㅎ is silent between vowels here, so the sound is joayo — and that is what we print. Say what you read.

Here 같이 is spelled with a ㅌ, but that ㅌ palatalizes before the i into a ch sound, so the pronunciation — and our romanization — is gachi, never "gat-i." Again, the romanization row is a recording of the sound, not a transcription of the letters.

And here the ㄱ of 국 nasalizes to ng before the ㅁ of 물, so 국물 is pronounced gungmul (then liaison links 물 + 이 into muri). We print gungmuri, the spoken form. If you tried to say the letters — "guk-mul-i" — you would sound wrong to any Korean ear.

Word-spacing (띄어쓰기) is kept natural

Korean, unlike Chinese and Japanese, puts spaces between words — a system called 띄어쓰기. This guide keeps those spaces exactly as a Korean would write them in the Hangul line: we do not add artificial gaps between letters or between syllable blocks, and we do not delete real ones. Each spacing unit is called an 어절.

A crucial detail: particles attach to their noun as part of the same 어절. The object marker 을 in 밥을 is glued onto 밥 — 밥을 is one spacing unit, written 밥을, never "밥 을."

The romanization row mirrors the same boundaries: it is segmented at the same places the Hangul is spaced, so 어제 친구를 만났어요 becomes eoje chingureul mannasseoyo — three chunks matching three 어절. Where a particle attaches, the romanization shows the liaison across the seam (친구 + 를 → chingureul). The full rules for Korean spacing live on the word-spacing page.

A few romanization mechanics

So that the reading aid stays consistent across 800 pages, the guide follows the official RR letter values: ㅓ = eo, ㅡ = eu, ㅐ = ae, ㅔ = e, the doubled consonants as kk/tt/pp/ss/jj, and ㄹ as r between vowels but l as a batchim (사랑 = sarang, 달 = dal). Hyphens appear only to prevent a genuine misreading across a syllable seam — 가을 is written ga-eul so it is not misread as "gaeul." Everything is lowercase, even at the start of a sentence, to keep the aid visually muted; only real proper nouns are capitalized.

Hanja (한자) stays out of ordinary examples

You will see the occasional Chinese character (한자) in this guide, but only on pages specifically about Sino-Korean etymology — where showing the underlying character genuinely illuminates a word's meaning. Ordinary examples are written the way Koreans actually write them today: in Hangul, with no hanja sprinkled in. So do not expect to study characters to use this guide; that background is optional and quarantined to the hanja page.

How to actually use the examples

The one reader error to avoid is the tempting one: reading only the romanization row and skipping the Hangul. Do the exact opposite. Read the Hangul first and try to sound it out yourself; then glance at the romanization to check whether you got it right; then read the English for meaning. Used that way, every example is a tiny reading drill that builds the script into your memory. Used the lazy way — romanization only — every example quietly cements the crutch this guide exists to remove.

Common Mistakes

1. Reading only the romanization and ignoring the Hangul. This defeats the entire design. The Hangul is the target; the romanization is the check.

2. Expecting the romanization to spell the letters. It spells the sound. 좋아요 is joayo, not "joh-a-yo," because that is how it is pronounced.

3. Adding artificial spaces inside or between blocks. Korean spacing separates words (어절), and particles attach to their noun; you never space a particle off.

4. Expecting hanja in every example. Modern Korean is written in Hangul; characters appear only where etymology is the topic.

Key Takeaways

• Every example has three rows: Hangul only (the target, and the only audio), a space-segmented Revised Romanization (a display-only reading aid), and idiomatic English.
• The romanization records the spoken surface form — sound-changes applied (좋아요 = joayo, 같이 = gachi, 국물 = gungmul) — never the raw letters.
• Word-spacing (띄어쓰기) is kept natural; particles attach to their noun (밥을 = one 어절), and the romanization is segmented at the same boundaries.
• Hanja (한자) appears only on Sino-Korean etymology pages, never in ordinary examples.
• Read the Hangul first; use the romanization only to check yourself.