Korean · Pronunciation Guide

How do you pronounce "셋" in Korean?

Q: How do you pronounce 셋 in Korean?

셋 is pronounced with the stress described below. In IPA it is written /set̚/. It means “three.” set, rhyming with the English word -- except the final t is never released. The tongue reaches its position and simply stops there.

set, rhyming with the English word -- except the final t is never released. The tongue reaches its position and simply stops there.

셋 /set̚/

set

A single clipped beat. The neutralization of ㅅ to a stopped t is the whole story of this word: what you write and what you say diverge completely at the end, and the s only comes back when a vowel follows it.

Listen: 셋

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Sound it out

se ㅅ before ㅔ stays a plain s and does not become 'sh'. The vowel is the e of 'bet', kept short and pure with no off-glide.

t The letter written here is ㅅ, but Korean permits only seven syllable-final sounds and ㅅ is realized as an unreleased [t̚]. No hiss, no burst -- just closure.

Hear it in a sentence

우리는 모두 셋이에요.

Urineun modu sesieyo.

There are three of us.

Listen: 우리는 모두 셋이에요.

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우리는 모두 셋이에요 is exactly that reappearance. With 이에요 attached, the ㅅ resyllabifies and returns as a real s, giving se-si-e-yo -- so the same word ends in silence on its own and in a hissing s inside a sentence.

Where English speakers slip

Beginners either release the final t with an English burst or, worse, pronounce the written ㅅ and say 'sess'. Neither happens in Korean: stop the airflow at the tongue ridge and leave it there, and the syllable is over. Learners also confuse 셋 with 넷, so keep the initial consonant crisp, because the vowels are identical.