How to Pronounce '천만에요': Korean Pronunciation Guide

Q: How do you pronounce 천만에요 in Korean?

천만에요 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /tɕʰʌn.ma.ne.jo/. It means “you're welcome (set phrase).” chun-ma-ne-yo, four beats. The ㅊ that opens it needs a real puff of air, and the ㄴ ending 만 slides forward to become the onset of the next syllable.

How do you pronounce "천만에요" in Korean?

chun-ma-ne-yo, four beats. The ㅊ that opens it needs a real puff of air, and the ㄴ ending 만 slides forward to become the onset of the next syllable.

천만에요 /tɕʰʌn.ma.ne.jo/

cheonmaneyo

Four even beats with no syllable singled out. What is worth marking is the resyllabification at the 만+에 seam: written as four blocks 천-만-에-요, spoken as cheon-ma-ne-yo, which is why the romanization looks like it has misplaced a consonant.

Listen: 천만에요

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

Sound it out

cheon Aspirated ㅊ -- hold a sheet of paper in front of your lips and it should visibly move. Then the unrounded 'uh' vowel and a tongue-tip n.

man Simple m and a bright 'ah'. This is the 만 of 천만, literally 'ten million', so the phrase is an idiom about an impossibly large number.

ne This n is borrowed: it is the batchim of 만 migrating across into the vowel-initial 에. The block on the page reads 에, but your mouth says 'ne'.

yo The polite ending, short and rounded, closing off a fixed courtesy formula.

Hear it in a sentence

천만에요, 언제든지 말씀하세요.

Cheonmaneyo, eonjedeunji malsseumhaseyo.

You're welcome, just ask me anytime.

Listen: 천만에요, 언제든지 말씀하세요.

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

천만에요, 언제든지 말씀하세요 offers a second, longer link right after. 말씀 ends in ㅁ and 하 follows, so the ㅁ closes and the ㅎ softens almost to nothing between voiced sounds, coming out roughly as mal-sseu-ma-se-yo in relaxed speech.

Where English speakers slip

Aspiration on ㅊ is what English speakers under-do. The ch of 'cheap' is already aspirated but less forcefully than Korean's, and learners hedge back toward the plain ㅈ; under-aspirate and 천만 starts drifting toward 전만. The other giveaway is pronouncing the written 에 as its own separate 'eh' -- cheon-man-EH-yo -- which sounds stiff and over-enunciated to a native ear.