When a consonant appears at the bottom of a syllable block, it's called 받침 (batchim), which literally means "support" or "base." For example, in 한 (han), ㄴ is the batchim. Here's the crucial insight: Korean has 27 possible batchim consonants, but they only produce 7 distinct sounds! All the others collapse into these 7 representative sounds when pronounced. The 7 batchim sounds: ㄱ [k], ㄴ [n], ㄷ [t], ㄹ [l], ㅁ [m], ㅂ [p], ㅇ [ng] Think of it like a funnel -- many written forms, but only 7 exit sounds.