Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "먼저" in Korean?

meon-jeo. Both vowels are the unrounded ㅓ, and the ㅈ is plain and voiced after the nasal.

먼저 /mʌn.dʑʌ/

meonjeo

Two matched blocks. Sharing a vowel makes this another self-check for ㅓ, and because both syllables also share a place of articulation in their consonants, the word has a compact, uniform texture.

Listen: 먼저

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Sound it out

meon An m made with both lips, over the flat ㅓ, closed by a tongue-tip n.

jeo ㅈ voiced by the nasal before it, over the same unrounded ㅓ, so the word should sound like it rhymes with itself.

Hear it in a sentence

먼저 생각해 보세요.

Meonjeo saenggakae boseyo.

Think about it first.

Listen: 먼저 생각해 보세요.

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

먼저 생각해 보세요 puts the adverb first, and 생각해 fuses its ㄱ batchim with the ㅎ into an aspirated ㅋ, giving saeng-ga-kae. A flat, soft adverb leads straight into the strongest aspirate in the sentence.

Where English speakers slip

Rounding either vowel gives 'mon-jo', which happens easily because the romanized 'eo' looks like an o -- keep the lips slack for both. Aspirating the ㅈ is the other slip, since after a nasal it should be genuinely voiced, and 'meon-cheo' sounds like a different word being attempted.