Tools/Korean to IPA
Korean to IPA converter
Convert Korean text to IPA phonetic transcription. See the IPA, hear the word, and turn it into review-ready flashcards — without leaving what you are reading.
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Korean in IPA
10 worked examples, each chosen for a sound the spelling hides.
thank you — the ㅂ in 합 assimilates to /m/
hello — ㅕ as /jʌ/
Korea — voiced ㄱ inside, unreleased at the end
school — a plain ㄱ written, a tense one said
kimchi — plain ㄱ, aspirated ㅊ
friend — aspirated affricate
Seoul — two syllables, final ㄹ as /l/
water — lateral ㄹ
rice, meal — unreleased final ㅂ
flower — tense ㄲ, and ㅊ neutralised to /t̚/
Korean sounds to know
The symbols that come up most often in Korean transcription, and what each one actually asks your mouth to do.
| Letter | Example | IPA | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| ㄱ (plain) | 김치 | /k/ | Neither the English k nor g: unaspirated and lax. Between vowels it voices to /ɡ/. |
| ㄲ (tense) | 꽃 | /k͈/ | Tense: a stiff, constricted throat and no aspiration. English has no equivalent, which is why the three-way contrast is the hardest part of Korean. |
| ㅋ (aspirated) | 코 | /kʰ/ | A strong puff of air — the closest of the three to an English k at the start of a word. |
| ㅈ / ㅊ | 친구 | /t͡ɕʰ/ | The same three-way split applies to the affricates: plain /t͡ɕ/, tense /t͡ɕ͈/, aspirated /t͡ɕʰ/. |
| ㄹ (between vowels) | 사랑 | /ɾ/ | A tap between vowels — closer to the Spanish r than to either English r or l. |
| ㄹ (final, or doubled) | 물 | /l/ | The same letter becomes a lateral at the end of a syllable. One letter, two clearly different sounds. |
| ㅓ | 서울 | /ʌ/ | Romanised eo, which suggests a diphthong it does not have. A single back unrounded vowel. |
| ㅡ | 그 | /ɯ/ | Romanised eu. A close back unrounded vowel with no English counterpart. |
| ㅂ, ㄷ, ㄱ (final) | 밥 | /p̚/ | Syllable-final stops are unreleased: the mouth closes and stops, with no audible burst. |
| ㅎ (between vowels) | 감사합니다 | /ɦ/ | Weakens to a voiced breath between vowels, and often disappears entirely in fast speech. |
How Korean writing maps to sound
Hangul is a featural alphabet packed into syllable blocks, so it maps to sounds far better than English spelling does. What it does not show is what happens at the seams: a final consonant is neutralised, and it then assimilates to whatever begins the next syllable. 학교 is written with a plain ㄱ and said with a tense one.
Which Korean do these transcriptions show?
Transcriptions follow Seoul-standard Korean. The Gyeongsang dialects keep a pitch accent that Seoul has lost, and Jeju differs enough to be counted as a separate language. Younger Seoul speakers are also merging ㅔ /e/ and ㅐ /ɛ/, which older descriptions keep apart.
Why guess Korean pronunciation?
Korean has a three-way stop contrast (plain, tense, aspirated) that English collapses into two, and consonants change at the end of a syllable and across word boundaries. Romanisation cannot capture these, but IPA can.
From Korean text to IPA in seconds
Select the text
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Press Alt+Q
IPAtics detects the language automatically and shows the IPA in a floating overlay, right where you are reading.
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