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Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "모자" in Korean?
mo-ja. A lip-shut m over a rounded vowel, then a plain ㅈ voicing between vowels into a soft j.
moja
Two beats. Nothing is aspirated or tensed and the vowels move from rounded to open, so the word is soft throughout, and the only thing to control is that neither vowel drifts toward the other.
Listen: 모자
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
추울 때 모자를 써요.
Chuul ttae mojareul sseoyo.
I wear a hat when it's cold.
Listen: 추울 때 모자를 써요.
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추울 때 모자를 써요 uses the ㅂ-irregular 추울 and then 때, which opens on a tensed ㄸ. The verb 써요 opens on a tensed ㅆ, so two tensed consonants frame a completely soft noun.
Where English speakers slip
Adding aspiration to the ㅈ into 'mo-cha' is the recurring plain-series error, since between vowels it should be as soft as possible. Flattening the ㅗ is the second, and it makes the two vowels sound more alike than they are -- the first is rounded and the second is not.