LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "아이" in Korean?
a-i. Two bare vowels with no consonant anywhere -- open ㅏ then tight ㅣ, joined without a break.
ai
Two syllables with no consonants at all, which makes this the purest vowel-transition word in the course. The only thing to time is the join, which stays connected rather than being broken into two separate sounds.
Listen: 아이
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
아이가 밖에서 놀아요.
Aiga bakkeseo norayo.
The child is playing outside.
Listen: 아이가 밖에서 놀아요.
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아이가 밖에서 놀아요 attaches the subject particle, and 밖에서 does something instructive: the tensed ㄲ batchim of 밖 resyllabifies forward and stays tensed, giving ba-kke-seo with a hard k in the middle.
Where English speakers slip
The glottal stop is the entire pitfall here. English speakers put one at the start and often another in the middle, producing something like 'ah-ee' with two hard onsets, when Korean wants a single continuous stream. Practise it as one smooth movement of the tongue rather than as two syllables.