Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "같다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 같다 in Korean?

같다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /kat̚.t͈a/. It means “to seem / to be like.” gat-tta. The ㅌ batchim neutralizes to an unreleased t and loses all its aspiration, and then it tenses the following ㄷ into ㄸ.

gat-tta. The ㅌ batchim neutralizes to an unreleased t and loses all its aspiration, and then it tenses the following ㄷ into ㄸ.

같다 /kat̚.t͈a/

gatda

Two beats around a held closure. Worth noting that batchim neutralization destroys information: ㅌ, ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅈ, ㅊ and ㅎ all collapse to the same unreleased t, so 같다 and 갔다 sound identical in citation form and only diverge once a vowel follows.

Listen: 같다

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Sound it out

ga Plain ㄱ at the front, light and barely voiced, over a wide 'ah'.

t The aspirated ㅌ, stripped of its breath by being in final position. Only seven sounds are possible as a batchim, and this one lands on the unreleased t.

da Tensed ㄸ, triggered by the stop in front of it -- compressed, unaspirated, sharply released.

Hear it in a sentence

좋은 생각인 것 같아요.

Joeun saenggagin geot gatayo.

It seems like a good idea.

Listen: 좋은 생각인 것 같아요.

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좋은 생각인 것 같아요 conjugates to 같아요, where the ㅌ resyllabifies forward and recovers its aspiration, giving ga-ta-yo. In front, 좋은 deletes its ㅎ between vowels to give jo-eun, so one short phrase contains both a recovered consonant and a deleted one.

Where English speakers slip

Learners aspirate the batchim, producing 'gath-da' with a breathy release in the middle, when final position strips that away completely. And once the closure is right, the following consonant still needs to be tensed rather than a plain English d -- the two errors reinforce each other, so fixing only one leaves the word sounding wrong.