ㅉ — ssangjieut
Korean consonant · /t͈ɕ/
ㅉ is /t͈ɕ/ — a tense, unaspirated j — sharp and clipped. It appears in 20 cells of the syllable chart, 15 of which have audio you can play here. It does not appear in the beginner vocabulary behind this site.
| Name | ssangjieut (쌍지읒) |
|---|---|
| Sound | /t͈ɕ/ |
| Romanized | jj at the start — not used as a final consonant |
| Hear it | Recorded by a native Korean speaker |
ㅉ in the syllable chart
15 of 20 cells have audio — 8 with their own recording, 7 borrowing one from an identically pronounced syllable. 5 have none yet.
Where the reading differs from the spelling
- 쨔 is read [짜] and romanized jja.
- 쪄 is read [쩌] and romanized jjeo.
- 쬬 is read [쪼] and romanized jjo.
- 쮸 is read [쭈] and romanized jju.
- 쨰 is read [째] and romanized jjae.
- 쪠 is read [쩨] and romanized jje.
- 쬐 is read [쬐/쮀] and romanized jjoe.
- 쯰 is read [찌] and romanized jjui.
See the articles that decide this.
Letters it gets confused with
Same three-way split on the j sounds: ㅈ plain, ㅊ aspirated, ㅉ tense.
Questions people ask
- How do you pronounce ㅉ? +
- ㅉ is /t͈ɕ/. In English terms it is a tense, unaspirated j — sharp and clipped. At the start of a syllable it is romanized jj.
- What is the name of the letter ㅉ? +
- It is called ssangjieut (쌍지읒). Korean consonant names are built so that the letter appears twice — once at the start of the name and once at the end — which tells you both of its positions at a glance.
- How many strokes does ㅉ have? +
- 6. They are written top to bottom and left to right, the same order used for every Korean letter.
- Why is 쨔 not read the way it is written? +
- 쨔 is pronounced [짜]. 8 of the cells in this set read differently from how they are written. The rules page quotes the article that decides it.
- Why do some ㅉ cells play a different syllable? +
- 7 of them do. The standard defines those syllables as having the same pronunciation as another one, so rather than play nothing the cell plays that syllable's recording. Each cell names which one it borrows.
- Do Korean words actually use ㅉ? +
- Rarely. Of the 568 words in the dictionary behind this site, only 0 contain ㅉ. It is worth recognising by sight, but you will not meet it often as a beginner.