Improve Your Korean Intonation | Korean FAQ

I share an outline of the basics of Korean intonation, including how to use pitch, as well as how certain consonants can have a higher pitch than others. Fortunately you don’t need to learn pitch in Korean separately - you’ll automatically pick it up through improving your pronunciation and from listening practice. But this video can help you to be more aware of what’s going on with Korean intonation.
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Music by Kevin MacLeod: “MJS Strings" and “Brightly Fancy.” (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)

[@SherryOsborne]

My only tip is to trust what Billy said at the beginning - while it's fun to learn the technical side of intonation in Korean, it really does happen naturally with time. Just focus on practicing and you will gradually get there

[@FalseNomen]

I can confirm-some years ago I got the EXACT same comment about my own Korean pronunciation. Apparently this is pretty common for English speakers, and I was told we can sound a bit childlike as a result. It can be hard to catch yourself or other English speakers doing it when they speak Korean, since they're intoning in a way that 'feels' natural (but isn't for Korean). One way to see what it might seem like to a native Korean is to listen to, for example, a Vietnamese person who's speaking at an intermediate or lower level. The 'sing-song' quality will be more noticeable, and it helped me be more aware of how I was doing it too (though I'm still far from perfect).

[@blueberry9878]

omg this is so interesting. i learned to "sound like this" just by listening a lot to native ppl taking, but is very interesting so see a technical explanation to it. the whole video i was like "omg yes ????? this is so true i do this too"

[@Prof.CrystalKim]

감사합니다 🙌🏻🙌🏻 I'm Korean teacher and your channel helps me a lot to explain in English 👍🏻👍🏻📝📝

[@GoBillyKorean]

That's great to hear! :D

[@grace.1123]

Fantastic as always, thank you Billy! I never consciously knew about the higher pitch of the first consonant rule but I've definitely picked it up naturally listening to Koreans over the years. My biggest mistake is I tend to go flat when I ask questions in Korean so I'm often misunderstood as people think I'm making a statement rather than asking a question. Silly because it's the same rule in English, so I don't know why I was doing it lol... definitely going to start incorporating more shadowing into my studying!!

[@melissat9120]

WOW. You are quite observant. I never noticed the doubling tendency with foreign loan words, but now that you've mentioned it, I've realized that it's SO TRUE. I like these analytical videos. I wish the algorithm favored them more!

[@Rascilon25]

Excellent advice! I am 4 months into learning Korean with a private tutor and this really helps!

[@KirkKiyosadaTome]

These technical explanations are definitely my favorite.

[@eundongpark1672]

I wish I could take this video back to a class I was taking in 2017. I said to the teacher that the only difference I could hear between ㅅ/ㅆ , ㅈ/ㅉ and ㅂ/ㅃ was that the syllable containing the ssang- character was emphasised, or the vowel in that syllable is emphasised

[@ssssundae]

awesome video as always billy! great information. an interesting thing that my mom (who is a korean american, immigrated to the US in the 70s) has observed is how singsongy korean is today compared to when she lived there. She notices it especially with mz generation women but she says that modern korean is actually quite grating to her because it feels very childish or exaggerated. i wonder if its the tonogenesis that she's noticing and being annoyed by!

[@GoBillyKorean]

That wouldn't be tonogenesis. It would simply be accents changing over time. Korean has changed quiet a bit since the 70s :D

[@joker91857]

you are amazing Billy, thank you

[@baum-jd6zj]

The best video about this topic I've seen so far

[@KelahCash]

As always, this video was super helpful, interesting & hilarious 😂 You are so appreciated. I started learning Korean October 2021, which was months into my journey with Long Haul Covid (still ongoing). You've been my teacher since the beginning. Both the long haul covid battle and Korean have been quite the journey, lol. But being able to learn a new language in the midst of all the ups and downs- even during many times of losing my voice- has been so rewarding. I appreciate how much you've contributed to where I am today and for all the laughs you have given me along the way. You're a blessing, Billy. God bless you & your family. 💙❤️🤗

[@vocecita]

So my name is 카리나 and j like the korean emphasis on the ㅋ, first syllable, which sounds different than it sounds when said in Spanish which has More emphasis on the second syllable

[@mjunejunie]

Ha, yes. My tutor LOL’d at me this week when I said New Orleans is 너무 더워요 because of my intonation. I feel sometimes like my speaking sounds robotic but this is a good reminder not to try and jazz it up.

[@ZobiWanKenobi96]

learning the melody of a korean sentence was sooooo difficult! but like you say, you dont/cant study it separately so once you do enough speaking and listening practice you get it!!!

[@jeff__w]

There’s a very distinctive intonation Koreans use-you can hear the male use it at the very end of the short “조성진, 임윤찬의 음악적 표현의 차이 # shorts # 고영배 #” [spaces added after the # signs to avoid a link] in the last syllable of “없네요” and “어떡해” and in a slightly abbreviated form in this old TTMIK video “TTMIK Talk - Presents” when 효진 says the word “했는데” at 2.00 in the last syllable “데.” (There are zillions of other examples but I just quickly found those two.) It’s like _nothing_ we use in English but it seems very characteristic of Korean.

[@GoBillyKorean]

There are intonation differences for many grammar endings, but those you'll want to learn together with the form since they can change the meaning of the form differently. It's not one single thing you can learn which applies to all of the forms.

[@yesuago1235]

I love your videos!

[@victoria.elm5]

This is what made English difficult to learn for me. Both Spanish and Korean are syllable timed languages, so I I've had no issue with my pitch. But English is a stress timed language, so it get difficult to stress words and syllables continously, lol. I guess this is why Korean has too many particles to make emphasis. Right now I can just recall 는/은, -야말로, -기는 하다, and a way too long etcetera. Thanks for the video! ❤

[@kimminhyung8906]

우와 저 이런 영상을 기다렸었어요 ㅠㅠ 빌리 쌤 감사합니다~

[@delalima]

excellent explanation

[@ameneamini88]

This is great👍🏻❤️

[@JamesTermy]

Thanks for this insight, especially how that we can pick this up naturally over time. With that said, I feel begs the question of how reliable kdrama is for this observation. From what I can tell it seems to be, one observation I should add is that when a character on a kdrama wants to add "emotional flare" to what they are saying, sometimes the tone at the very end of the sentences goes up and then down. (Squid games comes to mind). Even as a beginner I can feel the emotion and it felt natural to me... even when I first started it seemed intuitive how they do this.

[@GoBillyKorean]

K-drama uses real Korean, but it's scripted and usually much more complex than regular conversations. Also it's probably much more exaggerated than real life because it's a TV show. Normal conversations will be much more toned down.

[@Antonia_Zacharouli]

All roads lead to K-Drama! 😂😂😂 Thanks Billy!

[@michaelwoodbury1788]

I think what drew me to Korean was it's similar sound with Norwegian which is a two-tone language, so it sounded very familiar in that sense. American's sound like robots when speaking Norwegian, I wonder how we sound to Koreans. Also, it seems that Korean men and women have different intonation patterns. Should I be listening to more male speaking? After years of loud tools, I find female voices are more clear to me...except my wife, she Always speaks just below audible range.

[@GoBillyKorean]

I made a video about that here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y6nWaXihe8Zlfac

[@fangjiunnewe3634]

Huh I was under the impression that intonation was a leftover from when Korean DID have tones, which it lost over time. Vowel length is also a thing that is not taught any more and in the process of being lost but you can kinda hear it sometimes

[@GoBillyKorean]

Yes, you're thinking of vowel length: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5-anWpoZ6iKiJo

[@kevinrosenau7048]

5:45 So this is what it would sound like if Goofy was a teacher 😂

[@chansherly212]

5:43 BWAAHAHAHAAHA scooby doo impression

[@wereemi]

Hello hello! I have a question 빌리 선생님. I have a twin sister and when I look up for the word “twin” I found 쌍둥이 and I genuinely don’t know how to use it. Should I say “쌍둥이가 있어요”? Or instead should I say “쌍둥이에요”? I feel like the first one makes much more sense but I think it could also mean I have twin daughters. So I’m confused, I’d be happy if you could help me!

[@GoBillyKorean]

You can use either of those, depending on what you want to say. If you mean "I have a twin" then you can just use it with 있다. If you want to specify you can add what kind of twin they are after 쌍둥이, such as 쌍둥이 언니/etc.

[@SUGAs_Shadow85]

Does intonation also include inflection?

[@GoBillyKorean]

I just use the word "intonation" here in the general sense.

[@AdAstraAtx]

What might be a source of more natural native speech, but useful for a beginner? My intonation probably sounds somewhere between a KRomance star and a newscaster :)

[@melissat9120]

I'm pretty sure Billy has a conversation series that you can check out. 🙂

[@GoBillyKorean]

One of my subscribers commented below as well but I have a conversation course, and it's all natural conversations explained for Korean learners. But before that you'll want to have a foundation already, such as my Beginner Korean Course or something similar.

[@AdAstraAtx]

@@GoBillyKorean Thanks for your kind response! I just watched Lesson 1 on Weather. Great for me to hear the intonation! The format is wonderful. It's just too advanced for me right now; I have so far to go ;(. But I caught a lot and wanted to share a phenomenon I've noticed while learning. The speech seems impossibly fast prior to learning grammar/vocab. Then I swear to you the speech rate sounds slower when I understand more. Funny, huh? I appreciate all your hard work! I shall stay tuned!

[@benjaminkim6303]

Minor minor mistake, 3:22 you said 피자[는] 먹었어요 (which means the pizza ate), when you meant 피자[를] 먹었어요

[@GoBillyKorean]

It's not a mistake :) That's how you can use the Topic Marker (은/는) correctly too. I also made a video about this specific usage here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/emPQcp6glM5pmdk