ㅑ
Korean vowel · /ja/
ㅑ is /ja/ — the ya in yard. It appears in 19 cells of the syllable chart, 5 of which have audio you can play here. It does not appear in the beginner vocabulary behind this site.
| Name | 야 |
|---|---|
| Sound | /ja/ |
| Romanized | ya |
| Hear it | Recorded by a native Korean speaker |
ㅑ in the syllable chart
2 cells have their own recording, 3 borrow one from an identically pronounced syllable, and 14 have none yet.
Where the reading differs from the spelling
- 쟈 is read [자] and romanized ja.
- 쨔 is read [짜] and romanized jja.
- 챠 is read [차] and romanized cha.
See the articles that decide this.
Questions people ask
- How do you pronounce ㅑ? +
- ㅑ is /ja/. In English terms it is the ya in yard. It never appears on its own in writing — it always sits inside a syllable block with a consonant.
- How many strokes does ㅑ have? +
- 3. They are written top to bottom and left to right, the same order used for every Korean letter.
- Why is 쟈 not read the way it is written? +
- 쟈 is pronounced [자]. 3 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 ㅑ cells play a different syllable? +
- 3 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 ㅑ? +
- Rarely. Of the 568 words in the dictionary behind this site, only 0 contain ㅑ. It is worth recognising by sight, but you will not meet it often as a beginner.