Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "맵다" in Korean?

maep-tta. A short flat ㅐ, an unreleased ㅂ, and a tensed ㄸ -- and that ㅂ becomes a w when the word conjugates.

맵다 /mɛp̚.t͈a/

maepda

Two short blocks with a lip closure between them. Another ㅂ-irregular: 맵다 becomes 매워요, so the stop disappears entirely in the form you will actually use in conversation.

Listen: 맵다

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Sound it out

maep m onto the low front ㅐ, then the lips close for an unreleased ㅂ. The vowel is short, with no English long-a glide.

da ㄸ in its tensed form, produced by that stop closure and by nothing visible in the romanization.

Hear it in a sentence

이 음식은 너무 매워요.

I eumsigeun neomu maewoyo.

This food is too spicy.

Listen: 이 음식은 너무 매워요.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

이 음식은 너무 매워요 shows the irregular form, mae-wo-yo, and 음식은 in front resyllabifies its ㄱ into the particle, giving eum-si-geun. One hidden consonant surfaces and another vanishes inside a single sentence.

Where English speakers slip

Reading 'ae' as an English long a gives 'mape-da', which is both too long and wrongly shaped, since ㅐ is short and flat. And the ending is tensed rather than soft: the ㅂ closure forces it, even though the romanized 'd' gives no hint of that.