Korean Pronunciation

Korean pronunciation is vastly different from English, and it takes a lot

of practice to be able to be able to pronounce words correctly. The
biggest mistake you can make is assume that the pronunciation of a
Korean letter is identical to the pronunciation of that letters
Romanization in English. This is simply not the case and is a mistake
that virtually all new learners of Korean make.
Listen to some of the syllables in sequence so you can get a feel for
what they should sound like:
, , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
, , , , , ,
In addition to the syllables above, continue listening to the audio files
in Lesson 1 and Lesson 2 (Unit 0) in the tables presented in those
lessons.
Korean pronunciation is entirely different in structure compared to
English pronunciation. You may have noticed this from listening to the
recording files above. In English, whenever a word ends in a
consonant, we always make a little sound after saying that last letter. It
is very faint and difficult to hear for a person with a non-Korean ear to
hear. But try to hear the difference.
In English, if I were to say ship, there is a tiny sound of breath
following the p when our lips open.
In English, if I were to say dock, there is a tiny sound of breath
following the ck when your throat opens.
In English, if I were to say cod, (or kod) there is a tiny sound of

breath following the d when your tongue is removed from the roof of
your mouth.
In Korean, they do not have this final breath sound. This is hard to
understand at first to English speakers. Whatever position ones mouth
is in when they make the sound of a final consonant in a syllable it
stays like that. Listen to the following differences in English and
Korean pronunciation of the same syllables:
In English: ship
In Korean: (meaning ten)
In English = dock
In Korean: (meaning poison)
In English = kod
In Korean = (meaning soon)
However
If a word has a consonant as its final sound, and the first letter on
the following syllable is (meaning that the first sound is a vowel)
the breath from the final consonant from the first syllable gets
pronounced with the vowel from that syllable. It is confusing to write in
a sentence, so I will show you an example:
For example:
in Korean is pronounced the same way as described earlier (i.e. by
cancelling out the last-breath after the in . For example

If the following syllable is a consonant, nothing changes and the two

syllables are pronounced as usual:

However, if the next syllable starts with a vowel the breath after the k
sound is made along with this vowel. For example:

Technically, it sounds like:

Note that it is not actually written like this, but only sounds like this.
Also note that if these two syllables were pronounced separately (
and ), this phenomenon would not happen.
+ (pronounced separately)
The most confusing of this rule is when or are the last letters in a
syllable. When either of these is the final letter of a syllable, they are
NOT pronounced as S. Instead, they are pronounced similar to a D
sound. The reason for this is the same as I described earlier, that is,
Korean people dont allow that breath of air out of their mouth on a
final consonant. As soon ones tongue touches their teeth when
making the S sound, the sound stops and no breath is made after it.
Listen to the following syllables to train your ear:
, , , , ,
But, just like and , if syllables ending in or connect to
another syllable where the first sound is a vowel, that or is
pronounced as S combined with the following vowel (I know, it
is very confusing).
Lets hear at some examples:
and (pronounced separately)
(pronounced together)
As with , if the following syllable starts with a consonant, it gets
pronounced normally:

Explaining why different endings would come after a word (for

example, vs. and vs. ) is too difficult to explain in
this lesson. In Lesson 5 and Lesson 6 of Unit 1, you will be introduced
to conjugation and when you would have to use these different
pronunciation rules.
There are also some variants to pronunciation when is the final
consonant of a syllable and is followed by a consonant in the next
syllable. The reason for these changes in pronunciation is simply
because it is hard to move your tongue fast enough to make the
sounds as if their written. is a bit of an awkward sound in Korean,
and is very rarely used to start a word (it is usually only seen at the
start of loan-words from English). Because it is such an awkward
sound to make, there are some exceptions to how it is pronounced:
When the final consonant of one syllable is and the first consonant
of the next syllable is , the gets pronounced as :
Example:
+ (pronounced separately)
(pronounced together)
When the final consonant of one syllable is and the first consonant
of the next syllable is , the gets pronounced as :
Example:
+ (pronounced separately)
(pronounced together)
When the final consonant of one syllable is and the first consonant
of the next syllable is , the gets pronounced as :
Example:
+ (pronounced separately)
(pronounced together)

Finally, when the final consonant of one syllable is and the first
consonant of the next syllable is , the gets pronounced as .
This one is not that hard mainly because it is usually only seen in one
form (~)

.
The pronunciation of syllables that contain a fourth letter is a little bit
different than above. If you are a beginner, you definitely do not need
to memorize these rules/sounds/concepts from the very beginning.
Being comfortable with Korean pronunciation takes years, and is not
something that you can wrap your head around in a day. The best
thing you can do as a beginner is to simply familiarize yourself with
what is presented below (and above, for that matter). As you progress
through our lessons, you will eventually come across these words in
our Vocabulary Lists and in example sentences in our Lessons. Lucky
for you, our vocabulary words and example sentences have audio files
attached to them so you can listen to them as they are presented (if
they dont have an audio link, they will eventually). Familiarizing
yourself with what is presented below will help you when you are
introduced to these words later in our lessons. Ill repeat my point one
more time: While it is important to know how to pronounce things in
Korean this will not happen overnight. Use the concepts presented
here to set yourself off on the right foot, but dont get too bogged down
on memorizing everything right now. It will come with time.
If a syllable contains a fourth letter and is pronounced by itself, usually
only one of the two final consonants is audible.

For example, if you listen to the word , the is not audible and
the word is actually pronounced as
Another example is the word , where the is not audible and
the word is actually pronounced as
This is hard for me to explain because you probably havent learned
very much (if any) Korean grammar by this point. If I explain
something that goes over your head in terms of grammar dont worry
about that too much and try to just focus on the pronunciation notes I
mention.
The two words above are nouns.
For all intents and purposes, it would be rare to find a noun just sitting
by itself in a sentence. Rather, in Korean, one of many particles (or
other things) would be attached to it. You havent learned about these
particles yet, but you will be introduced to them throughout our
lessons.
For example:

etc
You will learn about the meanings of all of these in later lessons, but
dont worry about that now. Lets just focus on pronunciation.
If the thing that attaches to these words starts with a consonant, the
same rule from above applies, and only one of the two bottom

consonants is pronounced. For example (There are two separate

examples in the audio file below. I thought it would be better to give
two examples instead of one in each case):

(This sounds closer to )
However, if the thing that attaches to these words starts with a vowel,
the pronunciation of the final consonant, in theory, should move to the
upcoming syllable. For example:

(This should sound closer to but I admit it does
sound like .)
That is a native Korean speaker pronouncing those words, and there
probably is a reason why she pronounced it that way. This
is way beyond the scope of this lesson. Again, just try to understand
what is being presented here in theory. You will have thousands of
audio files to help you as you progress to later lessons.
is a noun, but various things are also attached to verbs/adjectives
as well that change pronunciation.

The following are three common verbs in Korean that have this fourth
letter (All verbs end with ~ but dont worry about that for now):
= to sit
= to read
= to not have
Listen to the pronunciation of each of those words. You will notice that
(just like the word above), because each of the four-letter
syllables is followed by a consonant (), only one of the two final

consonants is pronounced. As you can here, the letter that is not

pronounced is not the same is ever word.
In , is not pronounced (sounds like )
In , is not pronounced (sounds like )
In , is not pronounced (sounds like )
This is beyond your understanding right now, but various grammatical
principles can replace to have different meanings. You will learn
about all of these in later lessons. For example:

etc
If the thing that replaces starts with a consonant, the same rule
from above (with nouns) applies, and only one of the two bottom
consonants is pronounced. For example, if is followed by a
consonant:

(This sounds closer to )
However, if the thing that replaces starts with a vowel, the
pronunciation of the final consonant moves to the upcoming syllable.
For example, if is followed by a vowel:


(This sounds closer to )

You can see the same phenomenon with all words that have this 4th
letter. Lets listen to when is replaced by something starting
with a consonant compared to a vowel.
Followed by a consonant:

(Sounds closer to )
Followed by a vowel:

(Sounds closer to )

Lets do the same thing with

Followed by a consonant

(Sounds closer to )
Followed by a vowel

(Sounds closer to )

Lets do the same thing with (to scratch)

Followed by a consonant

(Sounds closer to )

Followed by a vowel

(Sounds closer to )
Again, explaining the difference in meaning and purpose between
vs. vs.
vs. vs.
vs. vs.
vs. vs.
is a matter of Korean grammar, which will be explained in our
lessons. As I mentioned earlier, our later lessons will have many
example sentences with audio recordings so you can continue to train
your ear as you progress through your studies. You absolutely do not
need to memorize these concepts before you move on. You will
memorize them naturally as you progress with our Lessons.