Korean Sound Change Cheat Sheet: Practice Set with Answer Key

A Korean sound change cheat sheet is a single reference table that lists every pronunciation rule with its trigger, its result and one common example, such as ㅂ + ㄴ → ㅁ in 합니다. This sheet covers eight rule families and 25 sub-rules, so you can find the rule behind any changed word and see its spoken form.

What you'll learn

• Find the rule and the spoken form for 합니다, 같이, 신라, 학교, 좋다 and 한여름.
• Look a word up by its letters, or by the sound you heard.
• Tell apart three pairs of rules that beginners mix up.

Prerequisite: Korean Sound Changes Explained, which shows how the rules fit together. Estimated time: 20 minutes.

What Is a Korean Sound Change Cheat Sheet?

A Korean sound change cheat sheet is a lookup table, not a lesson. It tells you which rule applies and what the result sounds like. It does not teach the mouth movements, which have their own lessons with audio.

Korean needs such a sheet because spelling and speech differ in a regular way. The spelling keeps the stem of every word visible, while speech follows the Standard Pronunciation Rules (표준 발음법) of the National Institute of Korean Language (국립국어원). The table below follows those rules. The first job is to see the whole set, so the master table comes first.

Which Rules Are in the Sheet?

The sheet holds eight rule families with 25 sub-rules in total. Read each row from left to right: the trigger is what you see, the result is what you say, and the example shows both. In the finished layout each family has its own tint, and every row also carries the family name in text, so colour is never the only signal.

Liaison (rows 1 to 5) occurs in almost every sentence, and rows 8 and 13 appear in the first polite sentences, in 합니다 and 학교. The sheet is in written order, so it now needs two doors in: one for the reader who sees letters and one for the reader who heard a sound.

How Do You Look up a Letter Pair?

Look up a letter pair by finding the two letters that touch, in the order they are written, in the first column below. The pair is the final consonant of one block and the first consonant of the next.

Worked use: for 합니다, the touching letters are ㅂ and ㄴ. The table sends you to row 8, and the answer is [함니다]. The reverse door works from sound.

How Do You Look up a Word You Heard?

Look up a word you heard by matching the surprise to the first column. The surprise is the difference between what you expected from the spelling and what the speaker said.

Some of these surprises sound alike on first hearing, which is the next topic.

The Three Pairs Learners Confuse Most

Three pairs of rules sound alike and cause most mix-ups. Each pair has one clear test.

The third pair is the most surprising, because the two rules run in opposite directions. The next section covers how Revised Romanization records them.

What Does Revised Romanization Show?

Revised Romanization (RR) records most sound changes but leaves out tensification. The official 2000 rules transcribe the sound for nasalization, liquidization, aspiration and palatalization, and they keep the plain letter for tensification. One limit: in nouns, an ㅎ after ㄱ, ㄷ or ㅂ is kept as h (집현전 is Jiphyeonjeon), so aspiration is shown mainly in verbs and adjectives such as 좋다.

Learners who read romanization will therefore say 학교 with a plain g. The rule is to read the Hangul and use the sheet. For more on the system, see Korean romanization. Every family also has a main exception.

Exceptions at a Glance

Each family has a short list of exceptions that the sheet does not repeat in every row. The most important one for each family is below.

• Liquidization: some Sino-Korean words go the other way and keep ㄴㄴ, as in 생산량 [생산냥].
• Tensification: passive and causative verbs stay plain, so 안기다 is [안기다], not [안끼다].
• Palatalization: root syllables stay the same, so 마디 is [마디].
• N-insertion: it needs a compound or derived word, so a particle never triggers it: 책이 stays [채기] with no added ㄴ.
• H-weakening: the careful form with a full ㅎ, such as [전화], remains standard even when the relaxed form is common.

The sheet marks exceptions to warn you, not to replace the lessons. A single worked example shows the lookup in action.

Worked Example: 합니다

Follow these steps to find the rule for 합니다 (does, do: the formal polite form of 하다).

1. Split into blocks. 합 and 니 and 다.
2. Find the touching letters. The final of 합 is ㅂ, and the first consonant of 니 is ㄴ.
3. Open the letter-pair table. The pair ㅂ + ㄴ points to row 8.
4. Read the result. ㅂ becomes ㅁ.
5. Say it. [함니다]. Check with the romanization: hamnida.

You will know you have it when the second syllable of 합니다 starts with an m-like sound before the n. Next, a note on printing.

Can You Print It?

You can print the sheet from any browser. The tables are plain text, with no images of text, so the Print command gives a clean page on A4 or US Letter paper. Choose landscape for the master table, and print the practice set last so the answer key stays at the end for self-checking.

A separate chart-style handout is listed with the other Korean printables. The audio belongs to the rule lessons, so the printed copy carries the written and spoken forms only. Finally, a practice set puts the sheet to work.

Practice Set with Answer Key

Exercise 1. Use the sheet to give the spoken form and the row number.

1. 합니다
2. 같이
3. 신라
4. 학교
5. 좋다
6. 한여름

Exercise 2. Which rule explains each sound you heard? Answer with a row number.

1. 설날 said as [설랄]
2. 할 수 said as [할쑤]
3. 입학 said as [이팍]
4. 닫히다 said as [다치다]

Exercise 3. True or false: Revised Romanization shows the tense consonant in 학교.

Answers.

Exercise 1: 1 [함니다], row 8. 2 [가치], row 22. 3 [실라], row 11. 4 [학꾜], row 13. 5 [조타], row 18. 6 [한녀름], row 24.

Exercise 2: 1 row 12, liquidization. 2 row 16, tensification after -(으)ㄹ. 3 row 19, aspiration. 4 row 23, palatalization with 히.

Exercise 3: false. Revised Romanization writes hakgyo and leaves tensification out.

If you missed more than two answers in Exercise 1, reread the letter-pair table and say the six words aloud before moving on.

Where to Go Next

The next lesson, Korean Consonant Assimilation, explains the shared idea behind nasalization, liquidization and palatalization. The full lesson sections are listed on the page about Korean pronunciation rules.

This sheet does not teach the mouth movements, the audio or the rare exceptions, which are covered in the family lessons. In short, a Korean sound change cheat sheet gives you the rule, the result and a real example for 25 patterns, and the family lessons give you the practice.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I find a list of all the Korean sound change rules? The master table on this page lists all eight rule families and 25 sub-rules, each with a trigger, a result and an example word. The families are liaison, nasalization, liquidization, tensification, aspiration, h-weakening, palatalization and n-insertion. Each family has its own section of lessons for deeper study.

Is there a printable version? The tables on this page are plain text, so a browser print command produces a clean A4 or Letter copy. Select landscape for the master table and print the practice set last, so the answer key sits at the end. A separate chart-style printable is listed with the other Korean printables.

Does the sheet include exceptions? It names the main exception for each family in the exceptions section, such as 생산량 [생산냥] for liquidization and 안기다 [안기다] for tensification. It does not list every irregular word. For those, check the lesson for the rule or the Standard Korean Language Dictionary, which marks the spoken form.

Which sound change rules appear most often? Liaison, nasalization and tensification appear in the earliest beginner words: 책이 [채기], 합니다 [함니다] and 학교 [학꾜]. The other families matter for natural speech and for listening. Learn the three common families first, then add one family at a time when you meet its words.