LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "새" in Korean?
sae. One syllable: a light Korean ㅅ and the short flat ㅐ, with nothing else in it.
sae
A single brief beat. Two sounds is the entire word, which means both have to be right, because there is no second syllable for a listener to fall back on if the vowel drifts.
Listen: 새
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
아침에 새가 지저귀어요.
Achime saega jijeogwieoyo.
The bird sings in the morning.
Listen: 아침에 새가 지저귀어요.
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아침에 새가 지저귀어요 attaches the subject particle to a vowel-final noun, and the verb 지저귀어요 is a long run of vowels and glides with a single plain ㅈ and a ㄱ, so nothing in the sentence is aspirated or tensed.
Where English speakers slip
'say' with an English long a is the whole difficulty, and it is hard to avoid because the romanized 'ae' looks exactly like a cue for it -- keep the vowel short and static. Adding English friction to the ㅅ is the second issue, and in a two-sound word it is immediately noticeable.