Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "번호" in Korean?

beo-no. The ㄴ moves forward into the next syllable and the ㅎ weakens so far that most speakers drop it entirely.

번호 /pʌ.no/

beonho

Even weight on both blocks. The interest is entirely in how much of the ㅎ survives -- careful speech keeps a trace and ordinary speech does not, which is why the word is usually indistinguishable from a hypothetical 버노.

Listen: 번호

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Sound it out

beon The opening ㅂ, quiet, over the flat ㅓ. The ㄴ that closes it on the page migrates into the next block in speech.

ho The ㅎ sits between a nasal and a vowel and lenites almost to nothing, so what you actually hear is the borrowed n plus a rounded ㅗ.

Hear it in a sentence

전화번호가 뭐예요?

Jeonhwabeonhoga mwoyeyo?

What's your phone number?

Listen: 전화번호가 뭐예요?

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전화번호가 뭐예요? buries the word inside a longer compound, and both ㅎ sounds in 전화번호 lenite, so the whole thing runs close to jeo-nwa-beo-no. That is four syllables with no audible h in them.

Where English speakers slip

Pronouncing a full English h in the middle gives 'beon-HO', which sounds over-articulated and is not what anyone actually says, so let it go. The other error is rounding the first vowel, which gives 'bon-ho' and loses the flat quality that ㅓ needs.