Ben Humphreys

Korean Pronunciation for British English Speakers

Most online guides and books feature simple introductions to Korean pronunciation based on English words. The trouble with these guides is that they’re written from an American perspective. The same words pronounced by a British English speaker will sound totally different and actually make it harder for you to be understood in Korean.

Before diving into the examples I want to say that at first learning from English examples is OK, but when learning a foreign language significantly different to your own, it’s invaluable to know the International Phonetic Alphabet, or at least the subset of the phonemes that occur in your target language. In this case, the Wikipedia page on Korean Phonology is the best place to start. I’ll put the IPA symbols for the Korean vowels alongside so this should help.

Finally two important points: this guide is based on southern “BBC English”, also known as “Queen’s English”. Also I am still only a beginner in Korean so please get a native speaker to check your pronunciation.

Two “A”s and “O”

• ㅏ ‘cat’ /a/
• ㅓ ‘cart’ /ɘ/ or /ʌ/
• ㅗ ‘cot’ /o/

I think it’s best to consider these first 3 vowels together as they are very close and it’s best to discuss their similarities and differences together.

ㅏ is a harder harsher sound sound as in ‘cat’ or ‘flap’. Whereas ㅓ is the more round sound as in ‘cart’ or ‘far’. I found it easy to remember that the right-facing ㅏ was a hard sound as in “attack” and the left-facing ㅓ as the slightly softer sounding of the two.

The difference between ㅏ and ㅓ is present within British English. Consider the difference between northern and southern English pronunciation of ‘grass’ and ‘glass’. In the north they are generally pronounced with a hard ㅏ but in the south they are pronounced with a Korean ㅓ.

One point to note is that in the English examples I gave, the /a/ in ‘cat’ is a shorter sound than the /ɘ/ in ‘cart’. When pronouncing Korean you should make the latter the same length as the short /a/ in ‘cat’.

Finally of the three, Korean ㅗ is pronounced identically to British English “cot”, with a short round o sound. This is different to the longer “oh” or “ou” sound in know/sew.

In addition I’ve been warned about not sticking out my lips far enough when I pronounce ㅗ. It’s easy to drift from ㅗ to ㅓ if you keep your mouth in the same shape, so try to make the ㅗ rounder than the ㅓ.

Two “U” Vowels

• ㅜ round “oo”, stick out lips /u/
• ㅡ wide “u”, spread mouth horizontally /ɯ/

The two Korean “u”s are difficult to pronounce and I admit I still cannot use them well in faster conversation.

The former ㅜ is the easier of the two to pronounce. It is close to English “food” but you must stick out your lips slightly more than

The latter ㅡ is worth studying via IPA and asking a Korean native speaker to pronounce for you. Before seeing it “in the flesh” I found the concept very hard to understand. In IPA it’s represented by /ɯ/ which is known as a close back unrounded vowel The key here is in the name, it’s pronounced in the back of the throat and most importantly you do not make the usual round mouth shape for “u” in English.

I remember the difference between the two through their shapes as characters. ㅡ closely resembles a thin wide mouth which corresponds to how it should be pronounced.

Two “E” Vowels

• ㅔ /e/ Close-mid front unrounded vowel
• ㅐ /ɛ/ Open-mid front unrounded vowel

The final distinction is arguably the most difficult. I’ve asked many native speakers about this and most say that even those fluent in Korean can’t hear the difference between the two of these when they are spoken at normal conversation speeds. However in theory there is a difference.

Their IPA names illustrate how close they really are. So far the simplest explanation I have come across is that ㅔ is a hard and ㅐ is softer. My only suggestion is to ask someone to pronounce it for you and watch their mouth.

The Rest

There are a number of dipthongs and other vowels like ㅚ and ㅟ. I might cover those in another post but if in doubt find a native speaker and get them to pronounce them for you. Good luck!