A Quick Guide to Korean Phonetics
Having awareness of this little cheat sheet guide will help you immensely instead of having to rely fully on the automated tool to do all the thinking for you. Think of it as learning how to count before you use a calculator.
1. If you ever see “eo” in a Korean name or place, it makes an “uh” sound.
For example, the city of Incheon is pronounced “In-chun” and not “In-chee-on”.
Likewise, Seoul is “Suh-ool” and not “See-ole”.
Another example is a name like Su-Hyeon (random name), which is pronounced “Soo-Hyuhn” and not “Soo-Hyee-on”.
2. Most times when you see “hye” it is pronounced as “hey”. It’s probably not a typo, Korean romanization just sucks. Use a slightly stronger pronunciation when you see "hae".
3. If you see two t’s in a row like in “tteokbokki”, you'll get away with subbing out the ‘tt’ for a ‘d’.
You should end up with “duhck-boke-ee” and not “tee-ock-bock-ee”.
4. “Si” sounds like “she”.
For example, a name like Min Sik is pronounced “Min Sheek” and not “Min Sick”.
This means "Sin" is pronounced "Shin", and more authentic pronunciations will sound slightly more like "Sheen".
Generally speaking, the letter "i" will sound more authentic if slightly elongated to sound like a long "E".
5. If your project has committed to using Korean accurate pronunciations for last names (some do and some don’t):
-Choi and Choe become “Che” like chess without the S’s. Like Michael Che.
-Kim becomes “Gim”. This rule can extend to words like “kimchi” and “kimbap” as well. You'll ideally split a G and K for that first consonant.
-Lee becomes “Eee”.
-Ri in most cases is pronounced "Lee" with the L consonant preserved.
-Park becomes “Pock” like 2Pac.