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Tense and aspirated consonants

Fire, horn and grass are bul, ppul and pul in Korean, three words told apart only by how the first consonant is made.

English sorts its stops into two groups, voiced and voiceless: b and p, d and t, g and k. Korean sorts them into three, and voicing is not what separates them. For each of the k, t, p and ch sounds there is a plain version, a tense version and an aspirated version. The plain one is what you met in unit 3. The aspirated one, written with an extra stroke, comes with a strong puff of breath. The tense one, written by doubling the letter, has almost no breath at all but a tight, held throat. The s sound has two versions, plain and tense, and no aspirated partner.

PlainTenseAspirated
kㄱ gㄲ kkㅋ k
tㄷ dㄸ ttㅌ t
pㅂ bㅃ ppㅍ p
chㅈ jㅉ jjㅊ ch
sㅅ sㅆ ss

The paper test

You can feel the difference with a strip of paper or a tissue held a few centimetres in front of your lips. Say the aspirated pa and the paper should jump. Say the plain ba and it should move a little. Say the tense ppa and it should hardly move at all. For the tense sound, think of the p in spy rather than the p in pie: English p after s has no puff. Then add tension, as if you were about to lift something heavy, and start the vowel sharply. Many learners find it helps to make the vowel after a tense consonant a little higher in pitch.

ㄱ ㄲ ㅋplaintensepuffㄷ ㄸ ㅌplaintensepuffㅂ ㅃ ㅍplaintensepuff breath after the consonant at the start of a word (schematic, not measured)
A rough picture of how much breath follows each consonant at the start of a word. Aspirated consonants carry a strong puff, plain ones a little, tense ones almost none. The bars are a teaching sketch, not measurements.

Words that depend on it

These are not fine details. Whole sets of everyday words differ only in this one feature. The words for moon, daughter and mask are dal, ttal and tal. To sleep, to be salty and to be cold are jada, jjada and chada. A room is bang and bread is ppang. To buy is sada and to be cheap is ssada, so a sentence about buying something cheap needs both. Listen to the sets in the recording below several times before you try to say them, because hearing the difference usually comes before producing it.

The doubled letters follow the same block rules as single ones. A doubled consonant goes in the first slot as one unit, so the word for bread is one block with the doubled p letter, the vowel a and a final ng. Two of the doubled letters, kk and ss, can also be written as final consonants: the word for outside ends in kk, and the past tense of verbs often carries ss. Following the seven-sound rule of unit 4, a final kk is heard as k and a final ss as t.

BackgroundFor years the official spelling of the most popular Chinese-Korean noodle dish, noodles in black bean sauce, was jajangmyeon, with plain consonants, because that is how the loanword rules spelled it. Almost nobody said it that way. Restaurants, menus and customers all said jjajangmyeon, with a tense first sound, and the mismatch became a running joke. On 31 August 2011 the National Institute of Korean Language added the tense spelling as a second standard form, along with 38 other words. Both spellings are correct today. The story is a good reminder that the tense sound is part of everyday speech, not a special effect.
Practice: hold a tissue in front of your mouth and read each set of three, plain, tense, aspirated. Then have a friend read one word from a set at random and say which one it was.
Under each line you will see the spelling in Latin letters. It follows the Revised Romanization of Korean, the system on South Korean road signs, issued by the Ministry of Culture in 2000 and published by the National Institute of Korean Language. Where a word is said differently from how it is spelled, the romanization follows the sound, as the official rules do. Listen to the recording (your device’s Korean voice) and copy the sound, not the letters.
  • 불 뿔 풀 · fire, horn, grass
  • 달 딸 탈 · moon, daughter, mask
  • 자다 짜다 차다 · to sleep, to be salty, to be cold
  • 방 빵 · room, bread
  • 사다 싸다 · to buy, to be cheap
  • 굴 꿀 · oyster, honey
  • 토끼 · rabbit
  • 아빠 · dad
불bul · fire
뿔ppul · horn
풀pul · grass
달dal · moon
딸ttal · daughter
탈tal · mask
방bang · room
빵ppang · bread
꿀kkul · honey
떡tteok · rice cake
코끼리kokkiri · elephant
For dictation, switch on a Korean keyboard (called Korean, or 2-Set Korean, on most phones and computers). On the standard layout the consonants sit on the left half and the vowels on the right, and the keyboard joins the letters into blocks for you as you type.

ㄱ ㄲ ㅋ · ㄷ ㄸ ㅌ · ㅂ ㅃ ㅍ · ㅈ ㅉ ㅊ · ㅅ ㅆ

  1. Into how many groups does Korean sort its k, t, p and ch sounds?
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
  2. Which letter is the tense p sound?
    • ㅂ
    • ㅃ
    • ㅍ
  3. Which consonant has no aspirated partner?
    • ㅅ
    • ㅈ
    • ㄷ
  4. Which word means horn?
    • ppul
    • bul
    • pul
  5. Which word means bread?
    • 방
    • 빵
    • 팡
  6. In the paper test, which sound makes the paper move most?
    • Aspirated
    • Tense
    • Plain
  7. Which English sound is closest to the tense p?
    • The p in spy
    • The p in pie
    • The b in bee
  8. Which romanization is correct for the word for rabbit?
    • tokki
    • toggi
    • tokgi
  9. How is a final kk heard, as in the word for outside?
    • k
    • kk
    • g
  10. When did the tense spelling of the noodle dish become standard?
    • 1988
    • 2011
    • 2020
  11. Type the word for daughter.
Key points
  • Plain, tense (doubled letter) and aspirated (extra stroke) are three different sounds.
  • Aspirated: strong puff. Tense: no puff, tight throat.
  • Many everyday words differ only in this: bul, ppul, pul.