Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "어떻게" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 어떻게 in Korean?

어떻게 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ʌ.t͈ʌ.kʰe/. It means “how.” eo-tteo-ke. Three blocks, and the consonants in the last two are both extreme: a tensed ㄸ, then an aspirated ㅋ produced by a hidden ㅎ fusing with ㄱ.

eo-tteo-ke. Three blocks, and the consonants in the last two are both extreme: a tensed ㄸ, then an aspirated ㅋ produced by a hidden ㅎ fusing with ㄱ.

어떻게 /ʌ.t͈ʌ.kʰe/

eotteoke

All three blocks the same length. This word is a compact demonstration of the three-way stop contrast in action -- a tensed consonant in the middle and an aspirated one at the end, with no plain member anywhere -- so if the two come out sounding the same, the contrast has collapsed.

Listen: 어떻게

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Sound it out

eo Bare unrounded ㅓ opening the word with no consonant in front of it at all.

tteo Tensed ㄸ: throat squeezed, no breath, a hard clipped release. Then the same flat ㅓ vowel again.

ke The ㅎ batchim of 떻 merges with the ㄱ of 게 into a single aspirated ㅋ, which is exactly why the romanization writes -ke and shows no h anywhere.

Hear it in a sentence

학교에 어떻게 가요?

Hakgyoe eotteoke gayo?

How do you get to school?

Listen: 학교에 어떻게 가요?

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학교에 어떻게 가요? shows the question word sitting mid-sentence, which is where Korean puts it, and 학교 ahead of it tenses its own ㄱ after the unreleased k of 학, giving hak-kkyo. Two separate tensing events land inside one short question.

Where English speakers slip

Beginners produce 'eo-deo-ke' or 'eo-tteo-he', either softening the ㄸ or trying to pronounce the ㅎ as its own sound. Neither happens: the ㄸ is tight and unaspirated, and the ㅎ exists only as breath on the final k. It is also easy to round the first two vowels into 'oh', when both are the flat ㅓ.