Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "아주" in Korean?

a-ju. An open vowel, a soft voiced ㅈ, and a rounded 'oo' -- nothing hard anywhere in the word.

아주 /a.dʑu/

aju

Both blocks the same length, and neither is stressed even though the word means 'very'. Korean intensifiers do not take the emphatic loudness English gives to 'very' -- the intensity is lexical, not prosodic.

Listen: 아주

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

Sound it out

a Bare open ㅏ with a clean start. English speakers add a glottal stop before initial vowels; Korean does not.

ju Plain ㅈ voiced between vowels, running onto a high rounded ㅜ.

Hear it in a sentence

이 음식은 아주 맛있어요.

I eumsigeun aju masisseoyo.

This food is very delicious.

Listen: 이 음식은 아주 맛있어요.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

이 음식은 아주 맛있어요 places 아주 in front of the adjective, and 맛있어요 then does two things at once: the ㅅ of 맛 migrates and palatalizes to 'sh', and the ㅆ resyllabifies as a double s, giving ma-shi-sseo-yo.

Where English speakers slip

Punching the word for emphasis is the instinctive English move and it sounds strange in Korean, where the phrase carries the emphasis instead -- say it flat. The ㅈ is the other point: between vowels it is soft and voiced, so 'a-choo' with aspiration is a different consonant entirely.