Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "기억하다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 기억하다 in Korean?

기억하다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /ki.ʌ.kʰa.da/. It means “to remember.” gi-eo-ka-da. Two vowels meet in the middle with nothing between them, and then the ㄱ of 억 turns the following ㅎ into a single aspirated ㅋ.

gi-eo-ka-da. Two vowels meet in the middle with nothing between them, and then the ㄱ of 억 turns the following ㅎ into a single aspirated ㅋ.

기억하다 /ki.ʌ.kʰa.da/

gieokada

No syllable stronger than any other. Two of them sit vowel to vowel, which makes the front of the word smooth, and then the aspirated ㅋ arrives as the only strong consonant in it -- a shape that gives the whole word a distinctly back-loaded texture.

Listen: 기억하다

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Sound it out

gi ㄱ in initial position, light and barely voiced, over a tight 'ee'.

eo A bare unrounded ㅓ arriving straight after the previous vowel. Lips flat, and no consonant to separate the two.

ka The h does not survive as itself: it converts the preceding stop into its aspirated counterpart, so one strongly breathy k replaces both letters.

da The last of four beats, and the only one with nothing happening in it.

Hear it in a sentence

저는 그 사람의 이름을 기억해요.

Jeoneun geu saramui ireumeul gieokaeyo.

I remember that person's name.

Listen: 저는 그 사람의 이름을 기억해요.

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

저는 그 사람의 이름을 기억해요 uses the possessive 의, which is pronounced 에, so 사람의 comes out sa-ra-me. Then 이름을 resyllabifies to i-reu-meul, and 기억해요 performs its aspiration merge, putting three separate processes into one sentence.

Where English speakers slip

Inserting a glottal stop between 기 and 억 is the first habit to break, since English cannot help doing it at vowel boundaries. The second is producing 'gi-eok-ha-da' with a released k and then an h, when what Korean gives you is one consonant with a strong puff and no gap at all.