LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "안" in Korean?
an -- an open 'ah' and a forward n. Short, unstressed, and always sitting directly in front of the verb it negates.
an
One beat, and although it is a negator it does not take contrastive stress the way English 'not' does -- negation is carried by word order rather than by loudness. The final ㄴ does interact with whatever verb follows, so the seam is where to listen.
Listen: 안
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
저는 커피를 안 마셔요.
Jeoneun keopireul an masyeoyo.
I don't drink coffee.
Listen: 저는 커피를 안 마셔요.
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저는 커피를 안 마셔요 places 안 in front of 마셔요, and the ㄴ runs directly into the ㅁ with no pause: an-ma-syeo-yo. Both consonants are nasals, so the entire join comes out as one continuous nasal stream.
Where English speakers slip
English speakers punch the negator, importing the emphasis of 'I do NOT drink coffee', and in Korean that sounds aggressive. Keep it level with everything around it. The other slip is the vowel -- 'ahn' should be fully open, not the nasalized flat vowel of English 'can', where the following n colours the vowel in front of it.