알못 (almot) means someone who has no idea what they are talking about in a given area. 컴알못 (keom-almot) is a person who knows nothing about computers. The opposite is 잘알 (jal-al), someone who knows the subject well.
알못 is compressed from 알지도 못하다 (aljido motada), “doesn’t even know.” 잘알 is compressed from 잘 알다 (jal alda), “knows well.” Both were built by the same forum culture and they travel together.
Romanization gets messy on both. 알못 is written almot but the final consonant is an unreleased t, so almos and al-mot both show up. 잘알 is spelled jal-al and pronounced jaral, because the ㄹ links into the following vowel. Search for jaral and you will find more than searching for jalal.
Examples
나 컴알못이라 (na keom-almot-ira) = I don’t know anything about computers, so…
The most common one by a distance.
축알못 (chuk-almot)
Soccer. 축구 clipped to 축. This is where the pattern came from, and it is still where you will see it most on sports forums.
주식알못 (jusik-almot)
Stocks. Some words get clipped to one syllable and some do not, and there is no reliable rule for which.
나 이거 알못임 (na igeo almot-im)
알못 standing alone with no prefix, meaning “I’m clueless about this.” Perfectly normal.
이 분야 잘알 계신가요 (i bunya jal-al gyesin-gayo) = is there anyone here who knows this field well?
잘알 used as a noun for a knowledgeable person.
The direction matters more than the word
This is the part English-language slang lists skip, and it is the only thing about 알못 that can actually get you in trouble.
알못 about yourself is normal and mildly charming. It works as a preface: 컴알못이라 잘 모르겠는데 (I’m hopeless with computers so I’m not sure) softens a question and lowers the stakes before you ask it. Koreans use it this way constantly.
알못 aimed at another person is a shove. Calling someone 축알못 in an argument means their opinion does not count because they do not understand the basics. It is not profanity and it will not get you banned, but it is dismissive in a targeted way, and it usually escalates whatever was happening.
잘알 runs in the opposite direction. About someone else it is a compliment. About yourself it sounds like bragging, so people hedge it: 반쯤 잘알 or 잘알까지는 아니고.
알못 vs 초보 vs ~린이
Three words that all get translated as beginner and mean different things.
초보 (chobo) is a beginner. Neutral, standard, usable in writing, usable to someone’s face.
알못 is not about being early in the process. It is about not having the knowledge, with no implication that you are acquiring it. Someone can be 컴알못 for forty years quite happily.
~린이 (-rini) means beginner too, and it is the one to leave alone. It attaches 어린이, meaning child, to a hobby, and the objection to it is exactly what it sounds like. Understand it when you see it, do not build new ones.
Where it does not go
Nowhere formal. Both words are clipped fragments of full phrases, which is audible to any Korean speaker, and the effect in a professional register is like writing “idk” in a report.
The formal equivalent for 알못 is 문외한 (munoehan), an outsider to a field, or just 잘 모릅니다. For 잘알, use 전문가 (jeonmun-ga) or 잘 아시는 분.
There is also an age and platform read. Both came out of forums around the early 2010s and they sound like it. In a message to a professor they would land as strange rather than rude, which is its own kind of problem.
One thing I am unsure about
알못 is clearly still alive. 잘알 I am less certain of. It feels less common now than it was five or six years ago, and I notice I reach for 고수 (gosu) or just 잘 아는 사람 instead without thinking about it. Whether that is a real shift in usage or a quirk of the specific places I read, I cannot tell from the inside, and I would not want a learner to build 잘알 into their active vocabulary on my say-so alone.