Learning to “Read, Read” in Korean (Liaisons)

Reading and speaking in Korean may sound very different from how you’ve first learned how to read the Hangul letters. This is because of liaisons. Just like in English, we connect the consonants and vowels, but in Korean, sometimes the connection of two of these elements bear a different outcome then what you might assume. So we’ve done our best to create a table for you so that you can always come back to it, as you gradually meet all the cases.

If a letter as a batchim of ㄱ and the next letter that comes in the next character is a vowel or ‘ㅇ’, then logically, it will become ㄱ.

e.g.) 복이 와요.

→ 복 on its own would be read ‘bok’. But to read the next letter, we connect the ㄱ to the following ㅇ. Therefore ‘복이’ would be read ‘보기’.

Here are some more examples:

The batchims that follow this ‘logical’ liaison rules are:

→ ㄱ, ㄲ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ = 14 consonants

As written above, the two 쌍받침s (double batchims), ㄲ and ㅆ also follow the same rule:

ㅎ creates a special combination. When combined with the letters ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, and ㅈ, it sound changes to ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, and ㅊ.

e.g.)

It matters whether the vowel that comes after the letter has an actual meaning in Korean or not. For example, with the ㅅ batchim, if the letter that comes after it is meaningless, like 옷이, then it’s pronounce normally like 오시. ‘이’ here is just a grammar particle.

IF the letter that comes after the ㅅ batchim does have a meaning, like ‘안’, which means “inside”, it turns into a ㄷ batchim. So 옷 안 would become 오단.

This rule goes for many other letters.

In case a batchim meets another consonant, often times it gets “intensified.” Meaning you “double the sound” and make it stronger. This is for the file consonants that do have a stronger version (ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ). The rest stays the same.

e.g.)

It’s quite overwhelming, indeed, to learn all the variety of sound changes. In case you need some additional help, make sure to check out our own special widget for sound decoder.

You will learn them as you go, but practice makes perfect.

So here is the whole list of sound changes. Refer back to this table whenever you are practicing how to read and circle all of the ones where the sound change to go through the text.

Remember that knowing these conversions is much more important than you might think, because it directly affects your listening skills. You might know a word, but when someone actually says it, it will sound different, which then it becomes, essentially, a word you don’t know.

But this isn’t something you will master overnight. Make sure to utilize the extra practice we provide in the ‘Practice Hub’ and also try different texts you can find online to apply to real-world cases!

* For more practice exercises, visit the ‘Practice Hub’.