Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "가" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 가 in Korean?

가 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ka/. It means “subject particle (이/가).” ga, one light beat. The consonant is plain ㄱ, barely voiced, sitting between English g and k, and the vowel is a wide open 'ah'.

ga, one light beat. The consonant is plain ㄱ, barely voiced, sitting between English g and k, and the vowel is a wide open 'ah'.

가 /ka/

A clitic, so it carries no accent of its own and simply extends the noun by a beat. The pairing to internalize is 이 after a consonant and 가 after a vowel, which means the particle you hear is a direct clue to how the noun in front of it ended.

Listen: 가

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

Sound it out

g Plain ㄱ. Following a vowel, which is where this particle always lives, it picks up voicing and does come out sounding like a g.

a Fully open, unrounded ㅏ. Keep it short and do not let it drift toward the flatter vowel of 'cat'.

Hear it in a sentence

제 친구가 한국에 살아요.

Je chinguga Hanguge sarayo.

My friend lives in Korea.

Listen: 제 친구가 한국에 살아요.

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

제 친구가 한국에 살아요 shows 가 in its natural home after the vowel of 친구, joining without a seam: chin-gu-ga. Compare 한국에, where a consonant-final noun lets its ㄱ resyllabify into the particle and voice, giving han-gu-ge.

Where English speakers slip

The mistake is treating 가 as a separate little word, putting a pause or a stress on it, which chops the sentence up. It is phonologically part of the noun. And because it follows a vowel, the ㄱ genuinely voices here -- pronouncing it as a hard aspirated 'ka' turns a soft grammatical tail into something that sounds like a new word beginning.