Korean syllables are written as blocks that combine an **initial consonant** and a **vowel**.  
In this unit we only use the plain consonants **ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹㅁㅂㅅㅇㅈㅎ** and the ten basic vowels **ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜㅠㅡㅣ**.  

Each block has no final consonant, so a word is simply a sequence of such blocks.  
For example:

- ㄱㅏ (가)  
- ㄴㅏ (나)  
- ㄷㅏ (다)  
- ㄹㅏ (라)  
- ㅁㅏ (마)  
- ㅂㅏ (바)  
- ㅅㅏ (사)  
- ㅇㅏ (아)  
- ㅈㅏ (자)  
- ㅎㅏ (하)

A word is read by looking at each block in order.  
The learner’s mistake often is to treat the whole word as a single unit and miss the internal blocks.

**Example sentence**  
*나 바다*  
::gloss
나 | S | I  
바다 | O | sea  
= I sea  

(Here “바다” is two blocks: 바 (ㅂ+아) + 다 (ㄷ+아).)

Now practice reading and translating these short phrases.  

::task translate  
나 바다  
그 나무  
어디 소리  
하나 바다  

::words
ㄱㅏ | ㄱ + ㅏ  
ㄴㅏ | ㄴ + ㅏ  
ㄷㅏ | ㄷ + ㅏ  
ㄹㅏ | ㄹ + ㅏ  
ㅁㅏ | ㅁ + ㅏ  
ㅂㅏ | ㅂ + ㅏ  
ㅅㅏ | ㅅ + ㅏ  
ㅇㅏ | ㅇ + ㅏ  
ㅈㅏ | ㅈ + ㅏ  
ㅎㅏ | ㅎ + ㅏ  
나 | I  
바다 | sea  
그 | he  
나무 | tree  
어디 | where  
소리 | sound  
하나 | one  

::progress 0-100 | starting unit, basics to be mastered.