Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "천" in Korean?

chun, with a genuine burst of air on the ch and a completely unrounded vowel. One syllable, and a short one.

천 /tɕʰʌn/

cheon

Single beat. In practice this word almost never stands alone -- it prefixes counters and other digits, as in 천 원 or 이천 -- so what you really rehearse is how cleanly that final ㄴ hands off to the next word.

Listen: 천

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Sound it out

cheo ㅊ is the aspirated affricate: release the tongue and follow it immediately with real breath. The vowel is unrounded ㅓ, the sound in 'cut' pushed further back.

n Tongue-tip ㄴ closing the syllable, made a little more dentally than an English n.

Hear it in a sentence

이거 천 원이에요.

Igeo cheon wonieyo.

This is a thousand won.

Listen: 이거 천 원이에요.

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

이거 천 원이에요 runs 천 into 원 with no break, and then 원이에요 shifts its ㄴ forward to give wo-ni-e-yo. The whole tail arrives as one four-beat stream, cheon-wo-ni-e-yo.

Where English speakers slip

Drop the aspiration and 천 slides toward 전, a completely separate morpheme. English ch in 'chin' carries some aspiration but less than Korean's, so push harder than feels natural. Then fix the vowel: 'chon' with rounded lips is wrong, because ㅓ demands flat, relaxed lips.