Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "강하다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 강하다 in Korean?

강하다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kaŋ.ha.da/. It means “to be strong.” gang-ha-da. The ㅇ at the end of 강 is nasal resonance only, and the ㅎ after it softens without disappearing.

gang-ha-da. The ㅇ at the end of 강 is nasal resonance only, and the ㅎ after it softens without disappearing.

강하다 /kaŋ.ha.da/

ganghada

Nothing here takes an accent. The one thing worth timing is the nasal, which is held rather than clipped, so the first syllable runs slightly longer than its spelling would suggest.

Listen: 강하다

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Sound it out

gang Plain ㄱ, an open ㅏ, and a final ㅇ that is pure nasal, with no g released after it under any circumstances.

ha ㅎ after a nasal. It weakens, but less than after a ㄹ, so it stays more audible here than in 잘하다.

da Soft and voiced, closing the word without weight.

Hear it in a sentence

오늘은 바람이 아주 강해요.

Oneureun barami aju ganghaeyo.

The wind is very strong today.

Listen: 오늘은 바람이 아주 강해요.

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오늘은 바람이 아주 강해요 conjugates to 강해요 and puts 바람이 in front, where the ㅁ moves into the particle to give ba-ra-mi. The sentence has a tap, a nasal link and a nasal-plus-h sequence, and no stop closure anywhere in it.

Where English speakers slip

The hard g after 강 is the giveaway, because English releases its ng in words like 'longer' and speakers carry that habit across. Korean does not. The other correction is the initial ㄱ, which is plain: a full English g at the start of a word is heavier than anything Korean does in that position.