Practise Korean with a native speaker, and give them English conversation practice in return. Roughly 81 million people speak Korean natively, so partners are easy to find; the useful discipline is showing up on time.
Endonym
한국어
Script
Hangul - 24 basic letters, learned in a day
Spoken in
South Korea, North Korea, China, the United States
First thing to learn
안녕하세요 — "Hello (polite)"
US Foreign Service Institute estimate for an English speaker starting from zero
~88 weeks
Furthest from English
Korean has a dedicated politeness system with different verb endings for different relationships, and it is compulsory rather than optional. The writing system is genuinely easy to learn in a day, which makes the grammar the surprise rather than the script.
Knowing this in advance changes what you do with a partner. Grammar drills on Koreanwill not fix a habit your first language gave you — only producing the sentence out loud and being corrected will. That is the specific thing an exchange gives you and an app does not.
A language exchange dies when nobody has anything to talk about. Take these into the call and you will fill the first half without silences.
Say 안녕하세요 (an-nyong-ha-SEH-yo) as your first line, then ask your partner when they would use it and when they would choose something more formal.
Ask your partner to write your own name in 한국어, then explain which sounds in your name do not exist in Korean.
Talk for two minutes about what you imagine daily life is like in South Korea. Have your partner correct the parts you got wrong - in Korean first, then again in English.
Talk for two minutes about what you imagine daily life is like in North Korea. Have your partner correct the parts you got wrong - in Korean first, then again in English.
Ask your partner for one sentence that exposes the hard part: Korean has a dedicated politeness system with different verb endings for different relationships, and it is compulsory rather than optional.
Switch to English and ask your partner to explain their own language's hardest feature to you. This is the half where you pay for the practice, so take it as seriously as your own turn.
You are not here to improve your English — you already have it. Practise Korean with someone who speaks it natively, and pay for it by answering their English questions properly. Fluent English speakers are the scarcest resource on an exchange, which is why you will match quickly.
Korean learners of English are often strong on grammar and weak on speaking, so they are looking for exactly the unscripted conversation practice this platform provides.
88 weeks of full-time study to working proficiency, on the US Foreign Service Institute scale - furthest from english. Korean has a dedicated politeness system with different verb endings for different relationships, and it is compulsory rather than optional. The writing system is genuinely easy to learn in a day, which makes the grammar the surprise rather than the script.
Around 81 million native speakers, concentrated in South Korea, North Korea, China. English has already borrowed taekwondo, kimchi from it, so you are not starting from nothing.
Hangul - 24 basic letters, learned in a day. Because the script is not the one you read in now, reading and speaking improve at different rates and are worth practising separately rather than hoping conversation covers both.
안녕하세요 (an-nyong-ha-SEH-yo) - "Hello (polite)". 안녕하세요 is polite and works through most of the day. 안녕 drops the polite ending and is only for close friends or people clearly younger than you.
taekwondo and kimchi all reached English from Korean - 2 words you can use on day one.
Free matching, free voice calls, free video calls. One twenty-minute call is enough to know whether it works for you.
Start your exchange