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Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "얼굴" in Korean?
eol-gul. Two ㄹ sounds doing different jobs, and a ㄱ that voices because a sonorant sits in front of it.
eolgul
Two beats. Both syllables end in ㄹ, giving the word a distinctly liquid texture, and the vowels are opposites in lip shape -- flat then rounded -- which is the main thing to control.
Listen: 얼굴
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
저는 아침에 세수해요.
Jeoneun achime sesuhaeyo.
I wash my face in the morning.
Listen: 저는 아침에 세수해요.
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저는 아침에 세수해요 uses a different verb for washing the face, and 세수해요 lets its ㅎ weaken between vowels, so the whole sentence contains no hard consonants at all.
Where English speakers slip
Matching the two vowels is the standard error, usually by rounding the first into 'ol-gul', when the first is flat and the second is rounded. Then there are the two laterals: an English dark l on either one pulls the neighbouring vowel backward and blurs the contrast the word depends on.