Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "선생님" in Korean?

seon-saeng-nim. Three blocks, each ending in a nasal, so the word is one long stretch of resonance.

선생님 /sʌn.sɛŋ.nim/

seonsaengnim

Three beats and three different nasals -- ㄴ, ㅇ and ㅁ -- in a row. The word is a compact tour of Korean's nasal inventory, and not one of the three is released or turned into a stop.

Listen: 선생님

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Sound it out

seon A light ㅅ over the unrounded ㅓ, closed with a tongue-tip n.

saeng The same ㅅ, still plain because the vowel is ㅐ rather than ㅣ, closed by a nasal ㅇ.

nim A forward n flowing out of that nasal, over a tight 'ee', closed by a lip-shut ㅁ.

Hear it in a sentence

선생님, 질문이 있어요.

Seonsaengnim, jilmuni isseoyo.

Teacher, I have a question.

Listen: 선생님, 질문이 있어요.

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선생님, 질문이 있어요 uses the word as a term of address, and 질문이 sends its ㄴ into the particle to give jil-mu-ni. Then 있어요 supplies the sentence's only tensed consonant.

Where English speakers slip

Letting a g through after 생 is the recurring error and it breaks the nasal chain. The two ㅅ letters are the other point: neither palatalizes, because neither is followed by ㅣ, so 'shon-shaeng' is an over-application of a rule that does not apply here.