DecksLearn your first 500 Korean words in 9 weeks
Spend one week on Hangul, then learn 10 new words a day. Eight weeks later you'll have seen 500 everyday Korean words. At the busiest point you'll do about 40 reviews a day.
Week 1: Hangul
Learn to read the alphabet first. Word cards won't make sense without it, and it's quicker than it looks. The Hangul deck has 40 cards: 19 consonants and 21 vowels, each with a native speaker recording. At 8 new cards a day, you'll have seen them all in 5 days. Use the other two days for reviews only.
Weeks 2 to 9: 500 words
The Korean First 500 Words deck has 50 lessons of 10 words each. Do one lesson a day. That's at the low end of the 10 to 20 new cards a day most people study. Each card has the word, its audio and its English meaning, and most have a picture.
The review numbers below assume you rate every card Good. In Decks, a card you keep getting right comes back after 1 day, 2 days, 5, 12 and 30. Cards you miss come back sooner, so expect more reviews than this.
| Week | New cards a day | Reviews a day (if all Good) | Seen by the end |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8 (Hangul) | under 20 | 40 letters |
| 2 | 10 (one lesson) | about 15 | 70 words |
| 3 | 10 | about 30 | 140 words |
| 4 | 10 | 30 to 40 | 210 words |
| 5 to 8 | 10 | about 40 | 490 words |
| 9 | 10, last lesson on day 1 | about 40 | 500 words |
| 10 onward | 0 | falling to about 25 | 500 words |
The Korean First 500 Words deck is free in Decks. To follow this plan on your iPhone, get Decks on the App Store.
Each day
- Do your reviews first.
- Then do one lesson of 10 new words.
- Play the audio every time and say the word out loud. Korean spelling and pronunciation don't always match, and hearing it early fixes that.
If you miss a day, do the reviews the next day and skip the new lesson. Pick it up once you're caught up.
If reviews pile up
If reviews start taking much longer than before, pause new lessons for a few days. What to do when reviews pile up has more. Decks' free plan has a daily review limit. Premium lets you set your own.
After 500 words
Korean Beginner Sentences is a good next step. It has 1,000 short everyday sentences, each adding a new common word, with audio and a translation. Keep doing your 500-word reviews while you start it. For a bigger list, Korean Vocabulary 6500 goes from beginner to advanced, most common words first.
Published 2026-10-19. Updated 2026-10-28.