Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "백" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 백 in Korean?

백 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /pɛk̚/. It means “hundred.” One syllable, 'baek', ending in a ㄱ that stops dead without releasing. The vowel is the flat a of 'bat', not the ay of 'bake'.

One syllable, 'baek', ending in a ㄱ that stops dead without releasing. The vowel is the flat a of 'bat', not the ay of 'bake'.

백 /pɛk̚/

baek

Nothing here needs emphasis -- it is a single clipped syllable, and in practice it is glued straight onto a counter or another numeral, as in 백 원 or 삼백, where that final stop starts tensing whatever follows it.

Listen: 백

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Sound it out

bae Plain ㅂ with no puff, then ㅐ, a low front vowel like the a in 'cat'. Do not let the romanized 'ae' tempt you into an English long-a diphthong.

k Final ㄱ as an unreleased [k̚]. The tongue reaches the velum and the sound simply ends, with nothing bursting out afterwards.

Hear it in a sentence

이 책은 백 페이지예요.

I chaegeun baek peijiyeyo.

This book is a hundred pages.

Listen: 이 책은 백 페이지예요.

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이 책은 백 페이지예요 sets 백 immediately before 페이지, and the unreleased k links into the aspirated ㅍ with no gap. Earlier in the sentence 책은 shows the mirror-image process, the ㄱ of 책 hopping into 은 and voicing to give chae-geun.

Where English speakers slip

The romanization invites an English 'bake', with a long diphthong and a released k. Both halves are wrong: ㅐ is a short, flat front vowel, and the final consonant is a silent closure. Say 'bak' as in 'back', stop the tongue at the roof of the mouth, and never let the k pop.