LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "남자" in Korean?
nam-ja. A forward n, a lip-closed m, and a ㅈ that voices after the nasal -- so a soft j, not a hard one.
namja
Two blocks with the same vowel in each. The consonants do all the differentiating, and the nasal in the middle means the word runs continuously voiced from beginning to end.
Listen: 남자
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
저 남자는 제 삼촌이에요.
Jeo namjaneun je samchonieyo.
That man is my uncle.
Listen: 저 남자는 제 삼촌이에요.
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저 남자는 제 삼촌이에요 pairs it with 삼촌, which contains an aspirated ㅊ, so the sentence sets a plain affricate and an aspirated one a few syllables apart. Then 삼촌이에요 resyllabifies its ㄴ into the copula.
Where English speakers slip
Aspirating the ㅈ into 'nam-cha' is the recurring error with the plain series, and after a nasal this consonant should be fully voiced. The vowels are the other issue: both are the open ㅏ, and reducing the second to a schwa imposes an English stress pattern on a word that has none.