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Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "고양이" in Korean?
go-yang-i. The nasal at the end of 양 carries into the bare vowel of 이, so the last two blocks run together as one stream.
goyangi
Three level blocks. The word is entirely voiced and contains no stops after the first consonant, which makes it unusually smooth, and the nasal join at the end is where learners most often insert something extra.
Listen: 고양이
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Hear it in a sentence
고양이가 하루 종일 자요.
Goyangiga haru jongil jayo.
The cat sleeps all day.
Listen: 고양이가 하루 종일 자요.
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고양이가 하루 종일 자요 attaches the subject particle to a vowel-final noun, and 종일 in front of 자요 has its own nasal-to-vowel join, so the sentence contains two of them.
Where English speakers slip
Sounding a g between 양 and 이 gives 'go-yang-gi', which is what English does in 'younger' and what Korean never does. Then there is the first vowel, since flattening the ㅗ toward 'uh' loses the rounding, and the glide in the middle tempts learners to split 양 into two beats.