Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "곧" in Korean?

got. One clipped syllable: a light plain ㄱ, a rounded ㅗ, and a ㄷ batchim that closes without releasing.

곧 /kot̚/

got

One clipped block. As with 못, the interesting behaviour happens at the boundary, where that unreleased t tenses a following plain consonant, so 곧 가요 comes out with a hardened ㄲ on the verb.

Listen: 곧

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Sound it out

go A quiet, unaspirated ㄱ opening the word, over a properly rounded ㅗ.

t The ㄷ batchim as an unreleased [t̚]. The tongue reaches the ridge and the word ends in silence.

Hear it in a sentence

곧 갈게요.

Got galgeyo.

I'm coming right away.

Listen: 곧 갈게요.

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곧 갈게요 shows the tensing twice over. The t of 곧 hardens the ㄱ of 갈, and then the ㄹ of 갈 hardens the ㄱ of 게, so a three-syllable reply contains two tensed consonants and neither of them is written.

Where English speakers slip

Releasing the final t is the recurring error with every stop batchim, and it is especially audible in a one-syllable word where there is nothing else to listen to. Learners also flatten the ㅗ into 'gut', when the rounding is what keeps this distinct from the many ㅓ syllables around it.