Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "아무것도" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 아무것도 in Korean?

아무것도 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /a.mu.gʌt̚.t͈o/. It means “nothing / anything.” a-mu-geot-tto. The ㅅ batchim of 것 neutralizes to an unreleased t, and that stop tenses the following ㄷ into ㄸ.

a-mu-geot-tto. The ㅅ batchim of 것 neutralizes to an unreleased t, and that stop tenses the following ㄷ into ㄸ.

아무것도 /a.mu.gʌt̚.t͈o/

amugeotdo

Four blocks with a silent closure before the last. The word is three morphemes glued together, and the only phonological event is at the final seam, where a neutralized batchim tenses the particle behind it.

Listen: 아무것도

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Sound it out

a The open vowel by itself, with no consonant to launch it.

mu m with both lips meeting over a rounded ㅜ, lips pushed forward.

geot The velar voices between vowels, the unrounded ㅓ, and the written ㅅ realized as an unreleased [t̚].

tto ㄸ in its tensed form, forced by that closure, over a rounded ㅗ. The particle 도 hardens automatically here.

Hear it in a sentence

아무것도 안 먹었어요.

Amugeotdo an meogeosseoyo.

I didn't eat anything.

Listen: 아무것도 안 먹었어요.

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

아무것도 안 먹었어요 puts the negator 안 in the middle, and 먹었어요 then releases its trapped ㄱ and resyllabifies twice, giving meo-geo-sseo-yo. The sentence therefore ends much softer than it begins.

Where English speakers slip

Saying 'a-mu-geot-do' with a soft d is what nearly everyone does, because the romanization shows a plain consonant and the stop in front is invisible. Learners also release that t, adding a burst in the middle of a four-syllable word where Korean wants a moment of silence.