Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "생각하다" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 생각하다 in Korean?

생각하다 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /sɛŋ.ga.kʰa.da/. It means “to think.” saeng-ga-ka-da. The ㄱ of 각 collides with the ㅎ of 하 and the two fuse into a single aspirated ㅋ, which is why the romanization shows no h.

saeng-ga-ka-da. The ㄱ of 각 collides with the ㅎ of 하 and the two fuse into a single aspirated ㅋ, which is why the romanization shows no h.

생각하다 /sɛŋ.ga.kʰa.da/

saenggakada

Four even beats. The word illustrates one letter behaving three ways: ㄱ voiced after a nasal in the second block, then swallowed into an aspirate at the third -- position, not identity, decides what you actually hear.

Listen: 생각하다

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Sound it out

saeng Plain ㅅ, the flat ㅐ vowel, and a nasal ng held without releasing a g afterwards.

ga ㄱ voiced after the nasal, so a real g, running onto a wide open 'ah'.

ka The ㄱ batchim of 각 merging with ㅎ into one aspirated ㅋ. Push genuine breath through this consonant.

da The tail that marks this as a dictionary entry. Short, soft, and never a place for emphasis.

Hear it in a sentence

어떻게 생각해요?

Eotteoke saenggakaeyo?

What do you think?

Listen: 어떻게 생각해요?

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어떻게 생각해요? sets the same fusion inside the conjugated 생각해요, and 어떻게 in front performs its own ㅎ-plus-ㄱ merger, so a two-word question contains the identical process twice over. Both come out with an aspirated k where the spelling shows a stop and an h.

Where English speakers slip

Saying every letter gives 'saeng-gak-ha-da', with a hard k, a gap, and then an h. There is one consonant in that slot and it is breathy. The other slip is releasing a g at the end of 생, when ㅇ in final position is pure nasal resonance -- a double velar there is a distinctly English distortion.