LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "알다" in Korean?
al-da. A bright forward l, then a ㄷ that stays plain and voiced -- this is one of the cases where the following consonant does not tense.
alda
Two blocks of identical length. The point worth flagging is a negative one: unlike 있다 or 먹다, where a stop batchim forces the ending to tense, a ㄹ batchim leaves the ㄷ alone, so 알다 really is al-da and not 'al-tta'.
Listen: 알다
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
저는 그 사람을 알아요.
Jeoneun geu sarameul arayo.
I know that person.
Listen: 저는 그 사람을 알아요.
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저는 그 사람을 알아요 conjugates to 알아요, where the ㄹ moves into the vowel and becomes a tap: a-ra-yo. Watch the same letter shift from a held lateral in 알다 to a quick flick in 알아요, purely because a vowel arrived behind it.
Where English speakers slip
Learners who have internalized the tensing rule over-apply it here and say 'al-tta'. The trigger is a stop, not just any consonant, and ㄹ is not a stop. The other habitual error is the English dark l made with the tongue humped at the back, which muddies the first syllable -- Korean's ㄹ stays bright and tip-articulated even in front of a consonant.