ㅒ
Korean vowel · /jɛ/
ㅒ is /jɛ/ — the ye in yes, with a more open vowel than ㅖ. 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 | 얘 |
|---|---|
| Sound | /jɛ/ |
| Romanized | yae |
| Hear it | Recorded by a native Korean speaker |
ㅒ in the syllable chart
5 of 19 cells have audio — 3 with their own recording, 2 borrowing one from an identically pronounced syllable. 14 have none yet.
Where the reading differs from the spelling
- 쟤 is read [재] and romanized jae.
- 쨰 is read [째] and romanized jjae.
- 챼 is read [채] and romanized chae.
See the articles that decide this.
Letters it gets confused with
- /jɛ/
- /je/
The y-glide versions of ㅐ and ㅔ, and they split the same way: ㅒ is more open, ㅖ closer.
In real speech: They have merged in most speech, and ㅒ is rare enough that you will mostly meet it in a handful of words.
Questions people ask
- How do you pronounce ㅒ? +
- ㅒ is /jɛ/. In English terms it is the ye in yes, with a more open vowel than ㅖ. It never appears on its own in writing — it always sits inside a syllable block with a consonant.
- How many strokes does ㅒ have? +
- 4. They are written top to bottom and left to right, the same order used for every Korean letter.
- Why is 쟤 not read the way it is written? +
- 쟤 is pronounced [재]. 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 ㅒ cells play a different syllable? +
- 2 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 ㅒ? +
- Rarely. Of the 568 words in the dictionary behind this site, only 0 contain ㅒ. It is worth recognising by sight, but you will not meet it often as a beginner.