Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "많다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 많다 in Korean?

많다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /man.tʰa/. It means “to be many / to be a lot.” man-ta. The double batchim ㄶ shows only its ㄴ as a consonant, while the hidden ㅎ jumps forward and aspirates the ㄷ into ㅌ.

man-ta. The double batchim ㄶ shows only its ㄴ as a consonant, while the hidden ㅎ jumps forward and aspirates the ㄷ into ㅌ.

많다 /man.tʰa/

manta

Two blocks delivered flat. The structure is identical to 괜찮다, and the two are worth learning as a pair, because both hide a ㅎ inside a cluster and both spend it on aspirating the next consonant instead of pronouncing it as itself.

Listen: 많다

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Sound it out

man m, an open 'ah', and the ㄴ from the cluster ㄶ. The ㅎ contributes nothing audible in this position.

ta That ㅎ reappears as breath: it merges with the following ㄷ to make an aspirated ㅌ, which is why the romanization ends -ta.

Hear it in a sentence

오늘 사람이 많아요.

Oneul sarami manayo.

There are a lot of people today.

Listen: 오늘 사람이 많아요.

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

오늘 사람이 많아요 shows the other outcome: with a vowel following, the ㅎ is deleted outright and the ㄴ resyllabifies forward, giving ma-na-yo with no aspiration anywhere. One cluster, two completely different results depending on what comes next.

Where English speakers slip

Saying 'man-da' with a soft d loses the ㅎ entirely, and that is the commonest version among learners. The breath has to go somewhere, and it goes onto the t. Some also try to pronounce the ㅎ as its own syllable, producing 'man-heu-da', which inserts a beat that simply does not exist.