Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "뭐" in Korean?

mwo, one syllable. Round the lips for the w and unround them immediately for the ㅓ -- a small, fast movement all inside a single beat.

뭐 /mwʌ/

mwo

A single short beat whose pitch does the grammatical work: flat it belongs to a statement, rising it becomes the question 'what?'. That contour lives on the phrase rather than on any syllable inside the word.

Listen: 뭐

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Sound it out

m Lips together for a clean m, released straight into the glide with no vowel in between.

wo ㅝ is a w-glide landing on the unrounded ㅓ. The lips start rounded and end flat, which is the exact opposite of the English 'wo' in 'won't'.

Hear it in a sentence

이게 뭐예요?

Ige mwoyeyo?

What is this?

Listen: 이게 뭐예요?

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이게 뭐예요? contracts 이것이 down to 이게, worth noticing on its own, and then 뭐예요 runs as three quick beats, mwo-ye-yo. The question is signalled by rising pitch on the final 요, not by any change to 뭐 itself.

Where English speakers slip

The commonest outcome is a two-syllable 'muh-wo' or a fully rounded 'mwoh'. Both miss: it is one beat, and the lips must unround as the vowel arrives. Learners who round throughout end up closer to 모, at which point the sentence stops being a question about anything.