LingoDrop
Korean · Pronunciation Guide
How do you pronounce "열" in Korean?
yull -- one syllable, a y-glide onto the unrounded ㅓ, finished with a light forward l.
yeol
A single short syllable. Worth knowing that 열 is the native numeral for ten and stacks with the other native numbers in 열하나 and 열둘, where the ㄹ then links into the following syllable instead of closing the word.
Listen: 열
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Sound it out
Hear it in a sentence
열 명이 왔어요.
Yeol myeongi wasseoyo.
Ten people came.
Listen: 열 명이 왔어요.
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열 명이 왔어요 puts 열 in front of the counter 명, and the ㄹ flows straight into the ㅁ with no break at all: yeol-myeong. The tail 왔어요 then resyllabifies its ㅆ forward, giving wa-sseo-yo with a full double s.
Where English speakers slip
Two things go wrong. The vowel gets rounded into 'yole', which is simply the wrong phoneme, since ㅕ keeps flat, relaxed lips throughout. And the l gets the English dark treatment with the tongue bunched at the back, which muddies it -- Korean's final ㄹ is bright and made entirely with the tip. Say 'yuh' and add a crisp l without letting the vowel colour shift.