LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "놀다" in Korean?
nol-da. A clear forward l closing the first syllable, and a plain voiced d after it -- the ㄹ does not tense what follows.
nolda
Nothing here that an English ear would call stress. Like 알다, this stem ends in ㄹ, which is worth carrying as a rule of thumb: a ㄹ batchim leaves a following plain consonant alone, whereas a stop batchim would harden it into a tensed one.
Listen: 놀다
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
아이들이 공원에서 놀아요.
Aideuri gongwoneseo norayo.
The children are playing in the park.
Listen: 아이들이 공원에서 놀아요.
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아이들이 공원에서 놀아요 conjugates to 놀아요, where the ㄹ moves into the vowel and becomes a tap: no-ra-yo. Ahead of it, 아이들이 gives a-i-deu-ri with a second tap of the same kind, so the sentence has that letter working as a lateral once and as a flap twice.
Where English speakers slip
Over-applying the tensing rule gives 'nol-tta', which is what learners produce after drilling 먹다 and 있다. ㄹ is not a trigger. The other correction is the l itself: an English dark l pulls the vowel backward and makes the first syllable sound like 'nole', when Korean wants the tip up and the vowel unchanged.