Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "돌아오다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 돌아오다 in Korean?

돌아오다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /to.ɾa.o.da/. It means “to come back / to return.” do-ra-o-da. The ㄹ of 돌 taps into the following vowel, and then two vowels meet with nothing at all between them.

do-ra-o-da. The ㄹ of 돌 taps into the following vowel, and then two vowels meet with nothing at all between them.

돌아오다 /to.ɾa.o.da/

doraoda

Level delivery across all four syllables. The interesting stretch is the middle, where 라 and 오 sit vowel to vowel: Korean links straight through that gap, and inserting a break there is what makes a learner's version sound chopped.

Listen: 돌아오다

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Sound it out

do A word-initial ㄷ, quiet and unaspirated, sitting over a rounded ㅗ.

ra The migrated ㄹ as a tap, carrying a wide open ㅏ behind it.

o A bare rounded ㅗ arriving directly after the previous vowel, with no consonant to separate them.

da The dictionary tail: voiced, quick, and never the place to put emphasis.

Hear it in a sentence

금방 돌아올게요.

Geumbang doraolgeyo.

I'll be right back.

Listen: 금방 돌아올게요.

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

금방 돌아올게요 uses the -ㄹ게요 promise ending, and the ㄹ tenses the ㄱ into ㄲ, giving do-ra-ol-kke-yo. So the same ㄹ that started as a batchim, became a tap and then reappeared as a batchim, all inside one verb form.

Where English speakers slip

Breaking 돌아 into 'dol-a' with a held l is the standard error and it stalls the word. Equally common is inserting a glottal stop between 아 and 오, which English does automatically at vowel boundaries. Keep the voice running continuously across all four syllables and let the tap do the linking.