LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "하늘" in Korean?
ha-neul. A soft ㅎ, a forward n, and then the lip-flat ㅡ closed with a bright l.
haneul
Two evenly timed blocks. The vowels are as different as Korean gets -- fully open, then high and back -- so the tongue travels a long way between them while the lips stay unrounded throughout.
Listen: 하늘
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
오늘은 하늘이 예뻐요.
Oneureun haneuri yeppeoyo.
The sky is beautiful today.
Listen: 오늘은 하늘이 예뻐요.
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오늘은 하늘이 예뻐요 attaches the subject particle, so the ㄹ taps forward and the noun becomes ha-neu-ri. And 예뻐요 opens with a tensed ㅃ, so the sentence ends on the only hard consonant in it.
Where English speakers slip
'ha-nool' with a rounded second vowel and a dark l is the standard distortion, and it gets both features of the second syllable wrong at once. Spread the lips and keep the tongue tip high. Over-blowing the ㅎ is the third habit, since Korean's is softer than the English one.