The first Korean words worth learning are the ones you will hear and need in the first week: polite greetings, a dozen everyday verbs in their spoken form, question words, the objects and places of a normal day, and the numbers you need to pay for something. Learn them in Hangul with audio, in the polite 요 form you will actually hear, and in two-word sentences rather than as single dictionary entries. About 150 words chosen this way carry you through a café, a taxi and a first conversation; a 1,000-word frequency list downloaded on day one usually carries you nowhere.
This article gives you those first words, grouped the way you will use them, and then the part most lists skip: how to remember Korean words when the spelling, the sound and the dictionary form all seem to disagree with each other.
Why Korean words slip away faster than the words of other languages
A beginner who has learned French or Spanish before expects a word to look the way it sounds and to appear in the dictionary the way people say it. Korean breaks both expectations at once.
The dictionary lists 가다 (to go), but nobody says 가다 to you. You hear 가요, or 갑니다, or 가. The dictionary lists 먹다 (to eat); you hear 먹어요. If your cards carry the dictionary form, you memorize a shape that never occurs in speech and then fail to recognize the one that does.
Spelling and sound disagree too. 감사합니다 (thank you) is pronounced closer to gam-sa-ham-ni-da, because the ㅂ before ㄴ turns into an m sound. 같이 (together) is said ga-chi, not gat-i. 있어요 (there is, I have) sounds like i-sseo-yo. None of this is irregular: Korean pronunciation rules are consistent. But a learner who reads words silently builds a private pronunciation that no Korean speaker will ever confirm.
Add two number systems, several politeness levels and a script that is easy to understand and slow to read, and you can see why people who know 500 Korean words on paper freeze when a waiter asks a four-word question.
Learn the spoken form, with the sound attached, inside a short sentence. That one habit removes most of what makes Korean vocabulary feel slippery.
The first Korean words to learn, by what they do for you
These lists are a starting pool, not a syllabus. Take the group you need first; a traveler starts with the first two groups, someone who watches Korean dramas might start with the verbs.
Polite survival phrases
These are learned as whole chunks. Do not take them apart yet.
- 안녕하세요 – hello
- 감사합니다 – thank you
- 죄송합니다 – I am sorry
- 네 / 아니요 – yes / no
- 괜찮아요 – it is fine, no problem
- 주세요 – please give me (물 주세요 – water, please)
- 얼마예요? – how much is it?
- 잘 모르겠어요 – I am not sure, I do not really know
Everyday verbs in the form you will hear
Learn each verb as its polite 요 form. It is the form strangers, shop staff and most textbooks use with you, and it is the one you can safely use back.
- 가요 – go, 와요 – come
- 먹어요 – eat, 마셔요 – drink
- 있어요 – there is, I have; 없어요 – there is not, I do not have
- 해요 – do
- 봐요 – see, watch
- 알아요 – I know, 몰라요 – I do not know
- 좋아해요 – like
- 사요 – buy
Pairs are deliberate: 있어요 and 없어요, 가요 and 와요, 알아요 and 몰라요. A word learned next to its opposite is harder to lose, because each one reminds you of the other.
Question words
Six words unlock most of the questions you will want to ask, and most of the ones asked of you.
- 뭐 – what (뭐예요? – what is it?)
- 어디 – where (어디예요? – where is it?)
- 언제 – when
- 누구 – who
- 왜 – why
- 얼마 – how much
People, things and places of a normal day
- 저 – I (polite), 친구 – friend, 사람 – person
- 물 – water, 밥 – rice, a meal, 커피 – coffee
- 집 – home, house, 학교 – school, 회사 – company, workplace
- 지하철 – subway, 버스 – bus, 역 – station
- 돈 – money, 시간 – time
- 오늘 – today, 내일 – tomorrow, 지금 – now
A few words to describe things
Korean descriptive words behave like verbs and also take the 요 ending, so learn them the same way.
- 좋아요 – it is good, I like it
- 맛있어요 – it is delicious
- 비싸요 – it is expensive, 싸요 – it is cheap
- 커요 – it is big, 작아요 – it is small
- 바빠요 – I am busy
Numbers: start with the set you pay with
Korean has two sets of numbers. Sino-Korean numbers (일, 이, 삼, 사, 오, 육, 칠, 팔, 구, 십) are used for prices, phone numbers, dates and minutes. Native Korean numbers (하나, 둘, 셋, 넷, 다섯 and so on) count things, people and hours. Beginners are often told to learn both at once, and then mix them up for months.
My advice is to learn Sino-Korean one to ten first, because the first thing you will do with numbers is read a price or hear one. Add 백 (hundred), 천 (thousand) and 만 (ten thousand) as soon as you can, since Korean prices are counted in units of ten thousand and 만 원 is a number you hear every day. Bring in the native numbers only when you start ordering two coffees instead of one.
How to remember Korean words once you have them
A list is the easy part. The following four habits are what separate people who still know these words in March from people who recognized them for a week.
1. Never learn a Korean word without its sound
Because spelling and pronunciation diverge so often, every card needs audio, and you need to say the word out loud before you check it. Silent reading teaches you a version of 감사합니다 that does not exist. Listening and repeating teaches the real one, and it also trains your ear for the vowel pairs beginners confuse most, ㅓ against ㅏ and ㅗ against ㅜ. The reasons go deeper than Korean; we explain them in Why You Should Learn Vocabulary with Audio, Not Just Text.
2. Learn the 요 form, and let romanization go early
Put 먹어요 on the card, not 먹다. You can learn the dictionary form later, when grammar needs it, and it will take you a minute because you will already own the word. Romanization is a different kind of trap: it feels helpful and quietly replaces the Hangul in front of your eyes. If you cannot yet read Korean comfortably, spend a few days on the script first; How to Learn Hangul with Flashcards and Audio shows how to do it with real words rather than a letter chart.
3. Put each word into a two-word sentence
Korean lets you make a complete, polite sentence out of very little. Use that.
- 물 주세요. – Water, please.
- 커피 있어요? – Do you have coffee?
- 집에 가요. – I am going home.
- 이거 얼마예요? – How much is this?
- 내일 바빠요. – I am busy tomorrow.
A word that lives in a sentence comes with a slot already attached: 주세요 arrives with the thing you want in front of it, 가요 arrives with a place and 에. When you later need a sentence, you are not building it from zero, you are swapping one piece.
4. Practice both directions
Seeing 지하철 and remembering "subway" is recognition. Wanting to say "subway" and producing 지하철 is recall, and it is the skill you use when you speak. Most learners practice only the first direction, because it is easier and feels like progress. Give the second direction its own short practice from the first week, with the Korean word hidden and only the meaning in front of you. It will feel slower. That is the sign it is working.
How to do this in My Lingua Cards
If you would rather not build the cards yourself, My Lingua Cards prepares them. Choose Korean as your learning language and your native language, pick a level (A1 if you are starting from zero), up to three goals and one to five starting themes. The app then prepares a starter dictionary of 300 Korean words for that level and those themes, sorts them into one starter set per theme, and activates the first 10 so you can start learning on the cards right away.
Each card shows the word in Hangul with its transcription, audio, the translation, a short description, an example sentence and an image, which covers the three habits above: the sound is there, the word appears in a sentence, and the spoken form is what you see. The learning session mixes new words with words that are due for review, so you do not decide what to study first. Reverse practice runs as a separate session, from the translation to the Korean word, and that is where the fourth habit lives.
Words from this article that are not in your starter set, or words you pick up from a song or a drama, go into Learning now: type them one per line or paste a short text, and the app adds the translation, so you study them alongside your starter words. Free access gives you one month and 300 cards, which is more than enough to find out whether this way of learning Korean works for you. Start on the Korean page.
Mistakes that undo a good start
- Downloading a 1,000-word list on the first day. It turns learning into a backlog. Fifteen words a week that you can hear, say and recall are worth more than a thousand you have seen once.
- Learning only nouns. You cannot say anything with nouns alone. Keep verbs and the question words in every batch.
- Keeping romanization on the card. Three days of support is fine. Three months means you are still reading Latin letters and Hangul is decoration.
- Starting with casual speech because a drama used it. The 요 form is safe with everyone. Casual forms are for later, when you can tell who is a friend.
- Treating the final consonant as optional. 밥 (rice) and 바 (bar) are different words. Say the final consonant, the batchim, at normal speed and check it against the audio.
What the first two weeks can look like
Ten to fifteen minutes a day is enough. The sequence matters more than the minutes.
In the first week, take the survival phrases and the question words, and add a handful of the verbs: 가요, 먹어요, 있어요, 없어요, 주세요. Review them every day, out loud, and say each one before you flip the card. By the weekend you should be able to order something and ask where something is, slowly, but without searching for the word.
In the second week, bring in the objects and places and start the two-word sentences, five or six of them, built from words you already know. Add the Sino-Korean numbers and practice reading a few prices. Start the reverse direction on the words from week one; they are familiar enough now that recalling them is a fair test rather than a guess.
After that, keep adding by situation rather than by frequency rank. If you are not sure which situation comes next, How to Start Learning a New Language When You Do Not Know Which Words to Learn First walks through the choice.
What to do today
Pick ten words from the lists above, including at least two verbs and one question word, and learn them with audio, saying each one before you check it. Then write two sentences with them. That is a real first day of Korean, and it beats another hour of choosing an app or a list. If you want the cards, the audio and the schedule ready for you, start with the Korean learning page and let the first 10 words come to you.
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