Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "잃어버리다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 잃어버리다 in Korean?

잃어버리다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /i.ɾʌ.bʌ.ɾi.da/. It means “to lose.” i-reo-beo-ri-da, five beats. The double batchim ㅀ loses its ㅎ entirely before a vowel and sends the ㄹ forward as a tap.

i-reo-beo-ri-da, five beats. The double batchim ㅀ loses its ㅎ entirely before a vowel and sends the ㄹ forward as a tap.

잃어버리다 /i.ɾʌ.bʌ.ɾi.da/

ireobeorida

Five blocks of equal length, the longest word in this stretch of the course. The rule worth naming is ㅎ-deletion inside a cluster: before a vowel the ㅎ of ㅀ vanishes completely, whereas before a stop it would have aspirated that stop instead.

Listen: 잃어버리다

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Sound it out

i A bare tight 'ee' opening the word, with no consonant and no glottal catch.

reo The ㄹ of the cluster ㅀ, resyllabified into the next block as a tap. The ㅎ that shared that batchim is deleted without trace.

beo Plain ㅂ voiced between vowels into a real b, over the unrounded ㅓ.

ri Another tap, this time landing on a tight 'ee'.

da The citation tail, short and soft after five syllables of consonant migration.

Hear it in a sentence

우산을 잃어버렸어요.

Usaneul ireobeoryeosseoyo.

I lost my umbrella.

Listen: 우산을 잃어버렸어요.

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우산을 잃어버렸어요 puts it in the past tense, so the tail resyllabifies twice: 버렸어요 gives beo-ryeo-sseo-yo with the ㅆ carrying forward as a double s. Together with the initial ㅀ deletion, the six-syllable verb form contains three separate boundary adjustments.

Where English speakers slip

Learners try to pronounce the ㅎ and produce 'ilh-eo', which is not a possible Korean syllable -- before a vowel it is simply gone. Length is the second problem: at five syllables, English rhythm wants to stress one and reduce the rest, and the result is a word in which three of the five vowels have collapsed into schwa.