Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "나쁘다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 나쁘다 in Korean?

나쁘다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /na.p͈ɯ.da/. It means “to be bad.” na-ppeu-da. The same shape and the same tensed ㅃ as 예쁘다, except that here it follows an open 'ah' rather than a front vowel.

na-ppeu-da. The same shape and the same tensed ㅃ as 예쁘다, except that here it follows an open 'ah' rather than a front vowel.

나쁘다 /na.p͈ɯ.da/

nappeuda

Level timing across three blocks, weighted very slightly toward the middle by the tensed consonant. Pairing this word with 예쁘다 makes a useful drill, since the two share a syllable exactly and differ only in what surrounds it.

Listen: 나쁘다

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Sound it out

na The dental n over a wide open ㅏ, both kept short and clean.

ppeu Tensed ㅃ over ㅡ. The lips go from pressed-and-released straight to spread-flat, which is the specific coordination this syllable demands.

da A voiced stop and an open vowel closing the dictionary form, with nothing to work on here.

Hear it in a sentence

오늘 날씨가 나빠요.

Oneul nalssiga nappayo.

The weather is bad today.

Listen: 오늘 날씨가 나빠요.

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오늘 날씨가 나빠요 contracts the verb to 나빠요 and hands you a second tensed consonant in 날씨, where the ㅆ follows a ㄹ. The sentence therefore holds a tensed bilabial and a tensed sibilant, and softening either one makes the whole line sound slack.

Where English speakers slip

Substituting an aspirated ㅍ gives 나프다 and substituting a plain ㅂ gives 나부다 -- the tensed consonant sits between those two and is the only one that produces a real word. The rounding error on ㅡ is the other half of it: if your lips move forward on the middle syllable, you have swapped the vowel for ㅜ.