Korean Words Pronounced Differently Than They’re Written

This is a video about Korean words that are pronounced differently than they're written. But before we start this video, I have to talk about first what this video is not about. Well, it's not about words that are pronounced differently due to sound change rules. For example, the word 학교 for school would be pronounced as 학교 due to sound change rules. It is not about that. And if you want to learn about sound change rules, I have several other videos on my channel for that. This is also not about words that are considered to be incorrect. For example, the verb 바라다 is often just said and written as 바래 or 바래요 when it's conjugated. This is not about words that are typically just incorrect or spelled differently and pronounced differently. No, this is, again, words that are spelled differently than how they are pronounced. It's also not about videos that have multiple ways to pronounce them. For example, 효과 can also be pronounced as 효과. Originally, it was only this one that was correct, but then they also accepted this one. And so many people actually use this one. But both of these are OK. So it's not about this either. Another example of this would be the possessive marker 의, which can be also pronounced as 에 when it's used to be the possessive marker. And it's not about dialect words or slang words because those can sometimes also have their own special rules for how they're used. One example of that would be the grammar form 으려고 for when you're intending to do something. You might see, for example, 가려고, like I'm going to go somewhere. Well, in slang, so in spoken Korean, you might also hear 갈라고. So again, this video is not about any of these sorts of things where words are pronounced differently than they're written. Simply words that are pronounced differently than they're written. So what am I talking about? Let me clean the board first. What actually gave me the idea for this video is the verb 닦다. Now, this means to wipe something clean, like wiping a table. 닦다. But it's not actually said as 닦다. You'll only see it like that maybe in an official news source or in the dictionary. But most people will actually pronounce this one as 닦다. So it's pronounced as if there was a double ㄷ here. 닦다. Not as 닦다, despite being spelled this way. However, it would never be written with two ㄷ here. And in fact, this applies to all of the words I'm going to be teaching you today. I recommend using the more common version when you're speaking, but know the correct one as well for when you have to take a test or write an essay. The next one is the word 카페. This is cafe, so a coffee shop. 카페 is actually not pronounced as 카페 most of the time. You'll actually hear it as 가페. So a completely different letter. Instead of 카페, you hear 카페. 카페. And you might also find some people writing it this way, but typically it's written the correct way as 카페. Another super common one that you'll see is the word 버스. 버스. But you don't say 버스. It's actually pronounced as 버스 with the double ㅂ here. 버스. And you'll notice that a lot of these words that have different pronunciation, not all of them, but a lot of them, are from English. So this sound change that's happening here, which is not an official sound change rule, this sound change is to make it sound more like the original word that it came from. For example, in English we don't say 버스, we say bus, right? So it's to sound more like the English word. The next one is also another English word. And that is the word 게임. 게임. But you don't say 게임. They say it as 게임. 게임. With double letters. Let's do one more English word, 댄스. Can you guess what this one is actually pronounced as? Yes, 댄스. So if you dance, you 댄스. So it sounds a little more like the actual pronunciation. Okay, I have a few more words, but let's clear off the board first. Another word that comes from English is 서비스. But everyone says this as 서비스. Now this doesn't actually mean service in English like you might think. This is service as in something is for free on the house. So like if you get free something along with your meal, anything like that would be considered service. So that's enough English words, let's go on to some Korean words again. To be simple. Well, this one's more often pronounced as... Can you guess? So you'll hear this one more often than you'll hear 간단하다. And last but not least, when you take the verb 이다 and you conjugate it, you can either get 이에요 after a consonant or 예요 after a vowel. And 예요 is actually pronounced as 에요. But it's supposed to be pronounced as 예요. Maybe you'll hear it on the news like that. It's always supposed to be written this way, regardless of how you say it. But 99% of the time, you'll simply pronounce this as 에요. In fact, that's why this is such a common Korean spelling mistake is because everyone says this as 에요. So when they write it, they'll also write it as 에요. So keep that in mind. And although I would say that these, like 간단, 버스, all of those, these are technically incorrect, I have a short story about that. There is another word that is also, or used to be, technically incorrect. 짜장면. If you know, it's the black bean paste noodles. They taste great. The original spelling of this word and pronunciation is supposed to be 자장면. 국립국어원, so the official, the national institute for the Korean language, they're kind of like the group that sets a lot of these rules and helps keep track of how Korean's changing. They're really great. But they were strongly pushing people to use this one, despite this one being heavily used already. So people pushed back on that. And now they said, OK, we accept both this and this are correct versions of the word. But originally, this would have been included in the video if it hadn't already been accepted a long time ago. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, although these versions are technically incorrect right now and they're just a different way that they're pronounced than how they're written, give it time, you know, another 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, who knows? Some of these, not all of these, some of these may change and become accepted as official alternate ways to pronounce it just because they are so common. So what other words like this did I miss? Are there any others that you can think of that you've heard before? Please let me know in the comments below. I do check all of those. Thank you for watching and I'll see you again next time. 그럼 다음에 또 봐!