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

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!

English “Sh” vs. Japanese “Sh”

This is another thing that surprised me on my travels around Wikipedia. Apparently Japanese “sh” is not identical to English as I have always thought. Also Korean is placed with Japanese rather than with English.

English — ʃ — Sheep — Voiceless palato-alveolar fricative Japanese/Korean — ɕ — 塩 (shio) — Voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative

Note the only difference between the 2 linguistic classifications is the order of palatal / alveolar.

I’ve listened to some of the samples on Wikipedia and I still can’t get my head around the difference. One of my native friends says that the Japanese “sh” is in between English “sink” and English “sheep”.

I’ll look for better explanations or examples but if anyone’s got some I’d love to hear about them.

Pronouncing 私 (ɰ͡β̞ataɕi)

While looking up what a voiced labial-velar approximant is (spoiler, it’s the wuh in weep), I came across something weird about Japanese.

On the page it said that 私 is written as ɰ͡β̞ataɕi in IPA, and is not exactly a Voiced labial-velar approximant. On the Japanese phonology page, it says:

7. The compressed velar /w͍/ is essentially a non-moraic version of the vowel /u͍/. It is not equivalent to a typical IPA [w] since it is pronounced with lip compression rather than rounding ([ɰ͡β̞]).

My linguistese is still developing so I wandered round Wikipedia translating the terms into stuff I could understand:

Compressed: When you round your lips to make a “W” sound, but you’re not sticking out your lips like you’re kissing someone (that’s called protruded). No, really. Examples below:

Compressed rounding example, aka The First Kiss Protruded rounding example aka The Sloppy Kisser

Velar: Consonants made with the back of the tongue touched against the top of the soft palate at the back of your mouth. Try making a W sound and then try putting your tongue at the bottom of your mouth towards the front and you’ll see the difference.

Non-moraic: A mora is described as “a unit of sound used in phonology that determines syllable weight (which in turn determines stress or timing) in some languages”. So in this instance the sound does not really count as a syllable (I think). There’s also an interesting note on that page about Japanese and moras which is somewhat related to my previous post on syllables in Hebrew and Japanese.

w͍ and u͍: The only reference to these I could find was on the general IPA page, which seems to suggest that the symbols underneath are used to represent unexpected roundness. I take this to mean the way that “u” can be pronounced with or without rounding your lips (see picture above).

So after all that, here’s a simpler explanation!

The first consonant “w” in 私 (watashi) is made by pressing your lips together rather than sticking out them as in the English “w”.

I have always pronounced the “w” without thinking about it so I think my “W” is rounded as that’s what English has. I’ll try to observe how Japanese people form the sound and see if there is a difference.