LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "못" in Korean?
mot. One clipped syllable with a rounded vowel and a final ㅅ realized as an unreleased t.
mot
A single clipped block, unstressed. Its real behaviour shows up at the boundary, where the unreleased t tenses whatever plain consonant follows, so 못 먹어요 and 못 가요 both harden the verb's first sound.
Listen: 못
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
수영을 못해요.
Suyeongeul motaeyo.
I can't swim.
Listen: 수영을 못해요.
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수영을 못해요 is a good demonstration: the t of 못 meets the ㅎ of 해요 and, instead of tensing anything, the two fuse into an aspirated ㅌ, giving mo-tae-yo. Same batchim, different outcome, depending on what it collides with.
Where English speakers slip
The final t gets released, which is the standard error, and adding a vowel after it is worse -- stop the tongue and leave it there. Learners also flatten the ㅗ toward 'uh', which matters because the lip rounding is one of the few cues separating this from the unrounded syllables around it.