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Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "누군가" in Korean?

nu-gun-ga. Two ㄱ letters, both voiced -- one between vowels and one after a nasal -- so neither is a hard English g.

누군가 /nu.gun.ga/

nugunga

No syllable louder than the others. Since the word is 누구 plus an interrogative ending, the seam is grammatical rather than phonetic, and there is no lengthening or pause where the two parts meet.

Listen: 누군가

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Sound it out

nu n with the tongue near the teeth, onto a high rounded ㅜ, with the lips pushed forward.
gun A ㄱ that voices between vowels, another rounded ㅜ, closed with a forward n.
ga The same letter voiced after the nasal, over a wide open ㅏ.

Hear it in a sentence

문 앞에 누군가 있어요.

Mun ape nugunga isseoyo.

There's someone at the door.

Listen: 문 앞에 누군가 있어요.

Free browser voice. Hear it read by a real native speaker inside the LingoDrop app.

문 앞에 누군가 있어요 puts 앞에 in front, where the buried ㅍ resyllabifies and recovers its aspiration to give a-pe. Then 있어요 supplies a double s, so the sentence has a soft middle framed by two strong consonants.

Where English speakers slip

Hardening either ㄱ into a full English g is the error, and doing it to both makes the word sound spelled out, when both are soft here. The two ㅜ vowels also need to stay rounded and equal, since reducing the second is what English rhythm does to any unstressed syllable.