How to Pronounce '안녕히 가세요': Korean Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 안녕히 가세요 in Korean?

안녕히 가세요 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /an.njʌŋ.çi ka.se.jo/. It means “goodbye (to someone leaving).” ahn-nyeong-hee ga-se-yo, delivered as one flowing farewell. The 히 is the interesting part: ㅎ before ㅣ hardens into the hissy sound at the start of German 'ich', not a plain English h.

How do you pronounce "안녕히 가세요" in Korean?

ahn-nyeong-hee ga-se-yo, delivered as one flowing farewell. The 히 is the interesting part: ㅎ before ㅣ hardens into the hissy sound at the start of German 'ich', not a plain English h.

안녕히 가세요 /an.njʌŋ.çi ka.se.jo/

annyeonghi gaseyo

Six syllables across two words, all even. The natural breath break falls after 히 rather than anywhere inside 안녕히, and pitch drifts down across 가세요 -- a falling farewell contour instead of any single loud syllable.

Listen: 안녕히 가세요

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

Sound it out

annyeong The same opening as the greeting: a held double n across the seam, then the unrounded 'yuh' vowel and a nasal ng with nothing released after it.

hi ㅎ in front of ㅣ palatalizes. Put your tongue where you would for the y of 'yes' and blow -- that front-of-the-mouth hiss is the target, not the throaty h of 'hot'.

ga Plain ㄱ opening a new word, so lightly voiced at most. Think of the g in 'again' said very softly, and never the hard k of 'car'.

se Plain s and the vowel of 'bet'. The s does not turn into 'sh' here, because that only happens before ㅣ or a y-glide and ㅔ is neither.

yo Short rounded 'yo' carrying the honorific weight of the whole phrase on its back.

Hear it in a sentence

안녕히 가세요, 내일 만나요.

Annyeonghi gaseyo, naeil mannayo.

Goodbye, see you tomorrow.

Listen: 안녕히 가세요, 내일 만나요.

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

안녕히 가세요, 내일 만나요 pairs the farewell with 만나요, where 만 ends in ㄴ and 나 begins with ㄴ, producing another held double n exactly like the one inside 안녕. Hearing the same geminate twice in one short sentence is a useful accident for the ear.

Where English speakers slip

Two traps here. 안녕히 gets flattened into 'annyeonghee' with an English h, which sounds noticeably foreign, because the palatalized ㅎ is audible and native speakers use it. And 가 gets heard as 'kah' and over-aspirated into ㅋ, but that puff turns a plain consonant into a different phoneme entirely. Say it with almost no breath -- and reserve this phrase for the person leaving, since 안녕히 계세요 is for the one staying.