A Beginner's Guide to Sound Length of Korean

안녕하세요? Today, we'll see about an interesting pronunciation factor of the Korean language. It is about the length of the sound. You can also utilize some audio files, so please follow my lesson! 😉

<Table of Contents>

1. Korean's sound length

2. Examples

3. How to distinguish the words

4. Wrap-up

1. Korean's sound length

The sound length refers to the duration of a sound. Sound length is crucial in distinguishing word meanings in many languages. For example, in English, we pronounce "live" with short [i] but "leave" with long [ē]. In Japanese, "おばさん[oh-ba-sang]" means an aunt but "おばあさん[oh-ba-ah-sang]" means a grandmother. They have completely different meanings depending on the length of the sound.

Will it exist in the Korean language? Yes, it is! Will it be important like English or Japanese? No, it is not! In Korean, sound length differences do not significantly affect word meanings.

Historically, it is believed that there was a distinction between long and short vowels in Korean. The National Institute of the Korean Language also set the rules for long and short sounds. However, these days, Koreans don't distinguish those sounds anymore. So in real life, you won't have to worry about much.

2. Examples

As I mentioned above, the sound length does exist in Korean. That length is implemented through the length of the vowel. Even though you won't distinguish the length in daily life, knowing some examples will still be good. In a dictionary, the long vowel sounds are written with the "ː " symbol in the pronunciation section. It's for the distinguishing purposes in the dictionary only. You don't actually use the symbol in real life.

Word	Short sound	Long sound
눈
굴
말
밤
새

See these many homonyms! There are, of course, more words than the examples above. That is why the National Institute still sets the rules about this matter.

The words "eye" and "snow" are both spelled as "눈" in Korean. However, when you read "눈(snow)", you are supposed to drag the vowel longer. So, it almost sounds like [누운].

Other words are the same. A "night" and "chestnut" are written as "밤" in Korean. "Night" is pronounced [밤], but "chestnut" is pronounced as [바암].

However, people don't pronounce the long sound in daily life anymore! So even though you want to say "snow," you don't read it as [누운]. You'll pronounce it the same as "eye," using the short, regular sound.

3. How to distinguish the words

Then, by now, you'll wonder. How can we distinguish the meanings if "snow" and "eye" are pronounced the same? The answer is context. Koreans understand the words by context. You can get "snow" in your "eyes" but getting "eyes" in "snow" is a little weird. Here are some examples of sentences. I marked the long sound words in blue.

• 눈에 눈이 들어갔어요. I got snow in my eye.

• 저는 밤에 밤을 먹어요. I eat chestnuts in the night.

• 말이 말을 해요! The horse is talking!

• 굴에서 굴을 먹어요. I eat oysters in the cave.

As you see, context is usually realized by markers(particles). For example,

That is why knowing markers in Korean is so important! Thanks to markers, you don't have to worry about memorizing all these homonyms. 😉

4. Wrap-up

Today, you learned about the sound length of the Korean language. Let's wrap up the lesson with the summary below.

• The sound length exists in Korean.

• But people usually don't distinguish in daily life.

• People distinguish homonyms by context.

• The grammatical markers are important to reveal the context.