LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "덥다" in Korean?
deop-tta. Plain ㄷ at the front, an unreleased ㅂ, and a tensed ㄸ -- and that ㅂ turns into a w when the word conjugates.
deopda
Flat throughout. The genuinely useful thing to know is that this is a ㅂ-irregular adjective, so the buried ㅂ becomes a w before a vowel and 덥다 turns into 더워요, adding a syllable and removing every stop from the word.
Listen: 덥다
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
오늘은 정말 더워요.
Oneureun jeongmal deowoyo.
It's really hot today.
Listen: 오늘은 정말 더워요.
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오늘은 정말 더워요 shows the irregular form, where the ㅂ has become a w and the adjective now runs deo-wo-yo, three open syllables. Nothing in the dictionary form predicts that the p will simply vanish.
Where English speakers slip
Rounding the ㅓ into 'dope' is the first error, since the romanized 'eo' misleads -- keep the lips flat. Then the ending needs its tension, because 'deop-da' with a soft d loses the compression, and English speakers also release the middle p, adding a burst that Korean does not have.