korean consonant pronounciation: they lied to you!

Korean pronounciation is hard. Let’s make it easier with a quick tip to pronounce consonants better that I learned independently.

What is the difference between a lax and tense consonant in Korean? (E.g. ㅅ vs ㅆ). The proscribed explanation that would be found in a textbook is the difference in forcefulness when pronounciating it. However, from my 2 years of experience of constant listening, this tends to be an anachronism.

Nowadays, Seoul speakers (the prestige dialect) mainly differentiate lax and tense consonants based on pitch, where 사 is pronounced with a lower relative pitch and 싸 is pronounced with a higher relative pitch. In fact, this is supported through research which states that modern Korean is slowly undergoing tonogenesis ¹

You may have also noticed that supposed unaspirated ² consonants (예를 들면: 가, 다, 자) sometimes sound like their aspirated counterparts (카, 타, 차). This is because recent sound shifts have also made it so that unaspirated constants will have a higher degree of aspiration when they occur at the start of a word. This is not as clear between words however.

The unaspirated and aspirated pairs also follows the pitch distinction, where the “aspirated” consonants (카, 타, 차) are almost always pronounced with a high pitch.

So, to summarize for pitch (Voice sample can be found in link):

가 –> Aspirated based on position, Low pitch. Example

까 –> Low aspiration, High pitch.

카 –> High aspiration, High pitch.

Do you get it now? It’s really not as bad as you think!