Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "아무도" in Korean?

a-mu-do. Three open syllables with a ㄷ that voices between vowels -- nothing hard anywhere in the word.

아무도 /a.mu.do/

amudo

Three blocks, level. The word always appears alongside a negative verb, so it forms a fixed frame with whatever follows, and the phrase intonation belongs to that whole construction rather than to these three syllables.

Listen: 아무도

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Sound it out

a ㅏ standing alone, fully open, begun without a catch in the throat.

mu A closed-lip m onto a high rounded ㅜ.

do Plain ㄷ between vowels, so a real d, over a rounded ㅗ. Two rounded vowels in a row at different heights.

Hear it in a sentence

여기에는 아무도 없어요.

Yeogieneun amudo eopseoyo.

There's no one here.

Listen: 여기에는 아무도 없어요.

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여기에는 아무도 없어요 stacks two particles on 여기 and finishes with 없어요, where the cluster ㅄ splits and the ㅅ resyllabifies as a tensed ㅆ, giving eop-sseo-yo. The soft opening makes that tension stand out.

Where English speakers slip

Aspirating the final ㄷ into 'a-mu-toh' is the commonest slip, when between vowels it should be soft and fully voiced. The two rounded vowels are the other trap: ㅜ is high and ㅗ is mid, and merging them makes the last two syllables sound identical when they are not.