Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "이해하다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 이해하다 in Korean?

이해하다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /i.hɛ.ha.da/. It means “to understand.” i-hae-ha-da, four beats with two ㅎ sounds embedded in a run of vowels. Both weaken, so the word flows far more smoothly than it looks.

i-hae-ha-da, four beats with two ㅎ sounds embedded in a run of vowels. Both weaken, so the word flows far more smoothly than it looks.

이해하다 /i.hɛ.ha.da/

ihaehada

Four level beats. What gives the word its texture is not stress but the pair of lenited ㅎ sounds -- in fast speech they reduce almost to breathy transitions, so four syllables end up feeling like one continuous vowel run.

Listen: 이해하다

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Sound it out

i A clean 'ee' opening the word with no glottal catch in front of it.

hae A light ㅎ onto ㅐ, the flat front vowel of 'cat'. Sitting between vowels, this h softens noticeably.

ha The second ㅎ, weakened the same way, running onto a wide 'ah'.

da A quiet closing syllable that carries no information beyond marking this as a dictionary form.

Hear it in a sentence

이제 이해했어요.

Ije ihaehaesseoyo.

Now I understand.

Listen: 이제 이해했어요.

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이제 이해했어요 puts the past tense on it, and the ㅆ of 했 resyllabifies into 어 to give hae-sseo-yo with a full double s. The sentence therefore contains two weakened h sounds and one strongly tensed s inside five syllables.

Where English speakers slip

English speakers pronounce both ㅎ sounds at full strength, producing a choppy 'ee-HAY-HA-da'. Korean lets them thin out between vowels. The 'ae' also invites an English long a with a glide, when ㅐ is short and flat -- so that second syllable should sound closer to 'heh' than to 'hay'.