Aspirated ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅊ and Tense ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ

What You Will Learn in This Unit

In this unit, you learn to distinguish the initial consonants of Korean into three groups, plain, aspirated, and tense, according to the strength of breath and the tension of the throat. You listen to and pronounce minimal pairs, in which the three types of sound differ by only one letter and the meaning of the word changes. You also check pairs that learners often confuse and connect each letter with its sound correctly.

Three Groups of Sounds

Initial consonants are divided into three series according to the place where the sound is made. The plain consonants are ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅈ, the aspirated consonants are ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅊ, and the tense consonants are ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ. The aspirated consonants ㅋ·ㅌ·ㅍ·ㅊ are the plain consonants ㄱ·ㄷ·ㅂ·ㅈ with one more stroke added, and the tense consonants are the same consonant written twice. There is no aspirated form of ㅅ, and the tense form of ㅅ is ㅆ.

As the table shows, the three groups are distinguished by breath strength and throat tension. Even consonants in the same series have different letters and sounds when they belong to different groups, so do not guess the sound from the shape of the letter alone.

Sounds with Strong Breath and Sounds with Throat Tension

An aspirated consonant is a sound in which breath comes out of the mouth strongly when the consonant is made. Hold your palm in front of your mouth and make the sound ㅋ. You will feel a strong breath. When you make the plain sound ㄱ, the breath feels weak. The presence or absence of this breath is called aspiration (기식, 氣息), and aspirated consonants are sounds with aspiration.

A tense consonant is a sound made while the muscles of the throat are tensed. When you make the tense sound ㄲ, tighten your throat and release almost no breath. Writing the same consonant twice in the letter shows this tense sound. Because tense sounds do not release strong breath, aspirated and tense consonants are also distinguished by breath strength.

Listening to Minimal Pairs

To distinguish the three groups of sounds, it is effective to listen to words that have the same vowel and final consonant and differ only in the initial consonant. Such pairs are called minimal pairs. In the table below, the three words in each row have the same vowel and final consonant and differ only in the initial consonant.