LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "아기" in Korean?
a-gi. The ㄱ sits between two vowels, so it voices into a genuine soft g -- nothing like a hard English one.
agi
Two beats. Because there is only one consonant in the whole word, everything depends on getting it soft -- an over-hard g is the single feature that would mark this word as foreign.
Listen: 아기
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
아기가 지금 자고 있어요.
Agiga jigeum jago isseoyo.
The baby is sleeping now.
Listen: 아기가 지금 자고 있어요.
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아기가 지금 자고 있어요 uses the progressive, and 자고 있어요 links the two verbs with no pause while 있어요 resyllabifies its ㅆ forward into a full double s.
Where English speakers slip
A full English g gives 'AH-ghee', with both a hard consonant and a stress bump, and neither belongs. Soften the g until it sounds almost lazy, and keep the two syllables the same length, since reducing the second is what English rhythm does automatically to a word of this shape.