LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "아들" in Korean?
a-deul. A voiced d between the vowels and then the lip-flat ㅡ, closed with a bright forward l.
adeul
Two beats. The second is where the difficulty sits, because it asks for an unrounded high vowel and a bright lateral in the same breath, and English instinct pulls both toward the back of the mouth.
Listen: 아들
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
제 친구는 아들이 있어요.
Je chinguneun adeuri isseoyo.
My friend has a son.
Listen: 제 친구는 아들이 있어요.
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제 친구는 아들이 있어요 attaches the subject particle, so the ㄹ taps forward and the noun becomes a-deu-ri. Then 있어요 opens its ㅆ into a full double s, which makes the sentence end considerably harder than it starts.
Where English speakers slip
'a-dool' with a rounded vowel and a dark l is the near-universal first attempt, and it gets both halves of the second syllable wrong at once. Spread the lips, keep the tongue tip up, and let the back of the tongue stay flat -- the l should sound like the one in 'leaf', not the one in 'pool'.