쳬 — che
pronounced [체]
쳬 is written with ㅊ and ㅖ, but the standard reads it [체] — not the way it is spelled. It is romanized che. The recording below is of 체, which the standard defines as the same sound.
Frequency: rare — it does not appear in the teaching material at all. The boundary is the median of the cells that appear at all, which works out at 21 occurrences.
The rules that decide this
Standard Korean Pronunciation, Article 5, Proviso 1
져, 쪄 and 쳐 appearing in conjugated verb forms are pronounced [저], [쩌] and [처].
용언의 활용형에 나타나는 '져, 쪄, 쳐'는 [저, 쩌, 처]로 발음한다.
After ㅈ, ㅉ and ㅊ the y-glide is not realised, so 쟈 is read [자] and 져 is read [저]. Those consonants are already palatal, and the glide is absorbed.
Romanization of Korean, Chapter 1, Article 1
Korean is romanized in accordance with standard Korean pronunciation.
국어의 로마자 표기는 국어의 표준 발음법에 따라 적는 것을 원칙으로 한다.
Romanization follows the sound, not the spelling — which is why 져 is written jeo and not jyeo.
All the rules this site follows
The two letters
Syllables that sound the same
The standard gives these the same reading as 쳬, even though they are spelled differently.
- 체che
Nearby in the chart
Questions people ask
- How do you pronounce 쳬? +
- 쳬 is read [체], not the way it is spelled. It is romanized che.
- Why does 쳬 play the recording of 체? +
- Because the standard defines them as the same sound. Rather than leave the cell silent, it plays the 체 recording and says so.
- Is 쳬 used in real Korean words? +
- Not in the beginner vocabulary behind this site. It is still a legal syllable, and once you know the two letters it is made of you can read it on sight.