ㅙ
Korean vowel · /wɛ/
ㅙ is /wɛ/ — the we in wet, with a more open vowel than ㅞ. It appears in 19 cells of the syllable chart, 1 of which have audio you can play here.
5 of the 568 words in the dictionary behind this site contain ㅙ — 3% of the bar the most common letter would fill.
| Name | 왜 |
|---|---|
| Sound | /wɛ/ |
| Romanized | wae |
| Hear it | Recorded by a native Korean speaker |
ㅙ in the syllable chart
1 of 19 cells have audio — 1 with their own recording, 0 borrowing one from an identically pronounced syllable. 18 have none yet.
Letters it gets confused with
All three are pronounced [we] by most speakers today, but the standard separates them: ㅚ is a monophthong [ø], ㅙ is [wɛ] and ㅞ is [we]. Article 4 allows ㅚ to be read as a diphthong too, which is why the ㅚ cells on this site show two readings.
In real speech: In everyday speech the three are hard to tell apart. Spelling still distinguishes them, so they are worth recognising by sight even if not by ear.
Words that use ㅙ
돼지
pig
왜
why
- 돼요is possible
- 쇄국isolation
- 왜곡distortion
Questions people ask
- How do you pronounce ㅙ? +
- ㅙ is /wɛ/. In English terms it is the we in wet, with a more open vowel than ㅞ. It never appears on its own in writing — it always sits inside a syllable block with a consonant.
- How many strokes does ㅙ have? +
- 5. They are written top to bottom and left to right, the same order used for every Korean letter.
- Do Korean words actually use ㅙ? +
- Rarely. Of the 568 words in the dictionary behind this site, only 5 contain ㅙ. It is worth recognising by sight, but you will not meet it often as a beginner.