LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "맞다" in Korean?
mat-tta. The ㅈ batchim cannot survive as an affricate, so it neutralizes to an unreleased t, which then tenses the ending.
matda
Word stress is not a factor, but the silent closure in the middle is: it lasts a real fraction of a second, and shortening it is what makes a learner's version sound rushed and indistinct.
Listen: 맞다
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
그 대답이 맞아요.
Geu daedabi majayo.
That answer is right.
Listen: 그 대답이 맞아요.
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그 대답이 맞아요 restores the hidden ㅈ. With a vowel following it resyllabifies forward and voices, so the verb comes out ma-ja-yo with an audible j. Ahead of it, 대답이 does the same thing with its ㅂ, giving dae-da-bi.
Where English speakers slip
Learners pronounce the written ㅈ and produce 'maj-da', which Korean does not permit at the end of a syllable -- stop the tongue at the ridge instead. And the ending must be tensed, since a soft 'mat-da' loses the compression that separates ㄸ from ㄷ, and that distinction is doing real work here.