Difference Between 어 and 오 | Korean Pronunciation Practice 

the butt hole bit had me laughing out loud

5 minutes of language theory + pronounciation guide + listening practice? This is heaven! In spanish we also have monophthongs. Actually, I think spanish and korean phonologies are quite similar. Our problem is that the 어 sound doesn't exist in spanish so we tend to use 오 instead of 어 One of my language exchange partners told me that sometimes I also commit this error. I plead guilty! hahaha Awesome video, as always

I used to mix 어 &오 a lot and I still have a feeling that at the end of the sentence Koreans don't always say -요😅

Thanks so much for this video! I can tell 어 and 오 by themselves apart but have difficulty telling them apart in words. After watching this I realized I can always recognize 오 in a word but when I hear 어 I get confused whether it’s 어 or 오. Guess I just have to practice listening to it more.

In português ( Brasil) we have accentuation to make this vowels Like. 오 “ o “ is o And 어 is ó. Same way you pronounced. Both pure vowels.

Different languages are so interesting. Bi or multilingual People absolutely astound me. It’s incredible to think that during their prime language development they were learning to make such different associations with objects and mouth sounds

The word you said (monophthong) is like music to my ears. Why? Because I'm a Korean teacher and have been FIGHTING for the right pronunciation of ㅓand have been telling my students and anyone else who was learning that there's absolutely NO trace of ㅗ while pronouncing ㅓ and got really rude feedbacks from other teachers (also non-native like myself) that I'm teaching it wrong and they insisted the correct pronunciation of ㅓ is between a (as in uh) and ㅗ (as in old)... -_- Yeah. The struggle's been real. I got to save a lot of students from making this mistake and now their native Korean friends praise them for their native-like pronunciation. Gotta use your video to enlighten the deaf brain cells of those who have been pronouncing Korean words wrong the whole time. It's thanks to romanization. I wish someone would step up and correct the damn system. Thanks for your informative video.

In German O, U, A, I etc are actually monophthongs it was confusing for me at the start when I learned English. Now - 20 years later and being fluent in English - it is a lot easier. I am sure that it'll become easier with Korean as well :) Romanisation confused me though, which is why I don't like it. With 어 being written as eo, I kept reading it as oe all the time which is the German Ö and sounds totally different haha

7:43 caught me off guard hahah

this was really helpful! i think it's really sad that, even when my native language is spanish which has constant vowel sounds, i still pronounce korean as if it was english :c but i think this will help! thank you! ^^

In India, we speak 22 official languages in different parts of the country. I found Korean similar to Hindi language (1 of the 22 languages). That's why sounds produced by Korean letters sounds familiar and easier to learn. But, again every language though we found familiar yet they have their unique traits. And she is very good in explaining korean language. If one is learning any language by oneself, one has to do lot of research until one come across something good. And I think some of my researches leads to something good (you). Thank you for explaining and responding to our queries.

YOU ARE THE BEST!!!!! Are you a linguist? You’re the best I’ve ever heard. Why haven’t I seen you before!!! This is the second video I’ve seen from you, and I have learned sssssooo much from you in a couple of minutes than a year of videos, apps, and books I’ve read. No matter how long I listen to translating apps repeating a sound over and over, I just can’t understand the difference. YOU ARE THE BESSSSSSSTTTT!!! Thank you sssssooo much!! The first video I saw of you was how to pronounce ㅈ, ㅉ, and ㅊ. I’m so impressed! Subscribing for sure!

Hey! I’ve been procrastinating learning how to speak Korean on my own since the start of the quarantine because of so many reasons, you know, it hasn’t been easy. But I unintentionally learned how to read hangeul and being 2 in the morning on a Saturday I realized I couldn’t difference 어 from 오 when it comes to phonetics, and then I found your channel. Thank you so much for this video, I am now subscribed and looking forward to watching more of your content. And excuse my English, I’m a native Spanish speaker (which sometimes makes me feel like I got it easier to pronounce Korean sounds!)

I'm so glad I speak Vietnamese with it's multitude of variations of how to pronounce a vowel depending on how many accents you add

I can tell the difference when I hear it but I can’t make the sounds with my mouth 🥺

thank you, hearing you say them side by side really showed the difference between them.

Super helpful. I love your technical explanations. I'd intuited it was the mouth shape but the monothong aspect I was doing but not conscious of. This makes it much easier for me to understand conceptually. Also loved your ㄱ, ㄲ, ㅋ video, that helped a LOT. Thankfully the ㄹ sound is very similar to Japanese (I'm Japanese-American but know enough Japanese to be very familiar with the Japanese "r") so that hasn't been a problem...

Oh, I could not find this video in your playlist [Korean Pronunciation], but fortunately I got it from a link in another video. Thanks, very helpful.

I've been struggling with this for about an hour now and finally came across your video, absolute game changer, thank you so much!!!!

As an (American) English speaker just starting to learn Korean, my brain sometimes hears 어 as "oh" like woe, "ah" like "awe," and sometimes "uh" like "hug." With all the Korean words I learned from watching Kdramas before knowing how they were spelled, 어 sounded the same as "oh" (in woe) to me, which is also how 오 sounds to me most of the time, except sometimes 오 sounds like "oo" (in who) to me, which is what I know 우 is supposed to sound like... 😭 I know I'll get it eventually, but for now it's just hard; I don't want to try pronouncing anything until I hear it spoken. Also, when Korean speakers end a sentence in 요, it sounds like 여 to me when they speak at a normal speed. Curse you, English brain! 😭

I didn’t even realize there was a difference 😅 but I can totally hear it now!! So cool!! I absolutely love these videos! They are helping me soo much! It’s nice to talk face to face and see/hear how it is pronounced!

I really appreciate for your help! I’ve been learning Korean for a really long while (for like 3 years?). Though getting high scores on some Korean exams, I still found myself struggling with those little difficulties like 오 and 어. After watching this I feel much more better about my pronunciation :) I still feel hard to tell when hearing 어, but I am okay with 오 now. I’ll keep trying! Thank you so much.

Thanks to learning Spanish (or at least some Spanish) in middle school, I’ve been able to differentiate 어 and 오 before learning Korean. This video is so well explained! I hope other people also see this and find it useful :) (I came from a recent post on reddit and was curious)

This was actually more helpfull that I thought it would be. I'm Dutch so we actually have a difference between to kind of o sounds too, we have "o" and a "oo", the first one is a very short version of 어 and the second one is the same as 오. Still I find it very difficult to hear the difference between 어 and 오 but when you did the thing with the two words and then which one is used, I could clearly hear the difference! It helped me differentiate betweet the two more, thank you!

i am an indonesian speaker and i found little bit hard to distinguish betwen these two vowels. and your video very helpful. easy and on point explanation.. instant subscribe 감상해요🙏

Before I really stuggled about the eo and o sound, this is really helpful!

ㅓ to me and to many sounds like the ‘aw’ as in when you say “ *aw* that cat is so cute!” Other examples include: The o in doll The o in long The o in wrong As for the ㅗ it is pronounced like word “oh”. Other examples include: Oa in road Oa in moat Oa in Goat O in Token

learning vowels in other languages is especially difficult for native English speakers because at some point in the past (middle English, I think) the language underwent a vowel shift without the alphabet really changing. One of the strongest examples of this is the English vowel "i" which in many languages has an "ee" sound like the word eel. But in English, the vowel "i" is generally pronounced like the word "eye" or "identify" or such.

we have something like eo in Persian but romanization of it makes it difficult, it is a very simple vowel for Persians but i learn Korean from English perspective.

In french they have so many vowel sounds, it's scary. a (아), é (애), è/ai (에), i (이), eu (으), o (어), au (오), ou (우), u (between 으 and 우) and then nasal sounds: an, ain, on, un

These exercises at the end were incredibly helpful, as was the diphthong explanation! This was such a needed breakdown of what is so confusing if you’re only using Duolingo to learn

this was PERFECT and fixed my issue in 5 min. 감사합니다!!

Super helpful thank! I appreciate the imagery lol 7:43

ahhhh the mono~dipthong difference does it for me, I've been puzzling lately specifically about 어 and 오 because if I'm in a situation where I gotta switch english and korean alot the english mouth really screws up my delivery. Thankyou! gonna marathon all your pronounciation vids

This is very helpful. I'm confident that I understand the difference now. Thank you.

I have an exam about listening tomorrow and I studied through this video, but it helps, really

Life saver! I have been studying for seven months now. This is so helpful. This will help my spelling! My teacher hopefully notice my improvement.

It's not only the shape of the lips, but the position of the jaw that learners can focus on. With 어 the chin drops much lower than with 오. As a learner, I found this to be a helpful way to differentiate. (It also helps that my native language differentiates these sounds.) 어 is more like the "awe" in "awesome" and 오 more like the "oo" in "poor".

what the heck this was a really effective lesson

Back to basics! Always the best approach! 고(거)맙습니다😂

I've finally successfully understood the difference ❤❤Thank you thank you 🤗

my biggest issue was to distinguish between "oe" and "a" but now i know "oe" is between "o" and "a". Helped a lot.

very good explanation 감사합니다

Your videos usually consist of just you talking without many added sound effects and much editing. This is great and makes me relax and focus at the same time on what you say. I find these videos very practical when I don't fully understand some of the explanations of other Korean lesson videos. 감사합니다.

This was so incredibly helpful to me holy cow, thanks a bunch 🤍

You are the best teacher. Thank you!

Thank you very much for explaining this point!! I was really confused 😵‍💫...... that was really helpful!!😆😊🙏♥️

I loved the whole explanation and especially the practice of words at the end. It makes more sense now, moving forward I will memorize those words to help me with pronunciation and spelling as well. Thank you

Thanks for such a detailed video. The ㅓ sound was hard for me at first because of the romanized 'eo' I was pronouncing like 'Eh Uh' at first, always learn Hangul it helps so much!

I just started learning korean last week and this was absolutely helpful for my pronunciation, thank you so much for this.

Great video. In swedish we have both "a" "eo" "o"and "u". But I think the borders between the vowels might be slightly different so sometimes I think it's hard to hear which vowel I hear in a word anyway. Your test in the end of the video was easy though.

Brilliant videeeooooo !!!!! THANKS

This video really helpful thank you❤❤

Don't confuse the English names for the phonetic sounds. In some words, like 'hole', you will hear something like the diphthong that is the name, but in a word like 'pot', the sound is a monothong, that is more similar to ㅓ. But with ㅜ, it is a new sound. Learning ㅜ and ㅗ are both sounds where lips push forward and squeeze together. It is similar with Finnish u svých is almost identical to ㅜ. That helps me a lot with the Korean forward vowels.

Just begin learning Korean and encountered this problem the first day. This is truly a common issue for foreign learners lol. Very helpful and I’m sure your other videos will be as well helpful

Thank you for this explanatory video, it helped me so much! And a fun fact: in Swedish we have a letter "å" that is similar to 어 but with more closed lips (which is why I can hear a clear difference but still has trouble with pronunciation sometimes)

oh man... this video is gold... :0

Came here fully intending to skip to the second part, but the breakdown/analysis was extremely helpful.

Been trying to learn this for days and finally got a better grasp because of your lesson! Thank you so much!

"Kinda looks like a butthole." 🤣 I am dead, and you are a gem. Thank you for explaining, humor aside, this was extremely helpful in understanding.

Thank you very much for this video! I still have troubles with distinguishing these sounds, but it seems that I have much better understanding of what I should pay attention to. Hope to never order nosebleed at cafe ever again! 😄

I am surprized that many people confuse eo and o.

감사합니다 🙏🏼 the way you explain things is so clear, it’s the best! i learn very well with the clear pronunciation guide you give. I notice how often times I already kind of guessed it correctly before watching your videos.

I struggle a lot with these two. But this helped a lot, and I'm going to focus on your advice to use vocab to help. My pronunciation is okay, I think, but I have a hard time hearing the difference between the two sometimes. Thank you so much!

It took me a while but I finally hear the difference between ㅂ ㅃ & ㅍ

This helped so much thank you !! TT you're a life saver!

Such a great teaching. good jobs. i understand now

thank you very much!! got stuck with differentiating these 2.. i couldnt hear the difference. its a big help. ill just practice over and over...

"Shake it Off" by Taylor Swift Pre-chorus of the 1st verse 캔트스탚 원트스탚 모벤! (Kaenteuseutap weonteuseutap moben!) 2nd part of the 2nd verse Taylor Swift who wore funk jacket: 캄단신 언마언! (Kamdansin eonmaeon!) Friendwomen except for Taylor Swift: 단신 언마언. (Dansin eonmaeon.) Taylor Swift who wore funk jacket: 카메카모 스가 스고! (Kamekamo seuga seugo!) Friendwomen except for Taylor Swift: 모은 스가 스고. (Moeun seuga seugo.) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nfWlot6h_JM.htmlsi=KK9QJYkkZguyeAzy

Great video as always. Thanks! Great with the practicing at the end. Once you have completed all the pronunciation videos then people can recommend the whole series to others and views can grow. I have seen on a lot of other language channels where it takes them one or two years to upload all the pronunciation videos and I've already moved onto other channels by then. I really like what this guy does here with the tongue diagrams and how he demonstrates the differences between ㅅ ㅆ s

The thought you put in to this is amazing

This is the first time in my life that growing up german has been useful, because vowels are similar to korean vowels in the sense that you can just keep saying them and they always sound the same

Can you do a video on the difference between 에 and 애

I think that you helped me fix the DZ(j)TZ(ch) difference problem. Now i get its polish Z(y) and C(y) only. The monosound concept is really enlightening! It is only a korean manner to put t for ease of spelling it properly. Polish O and polish U. 1 pure sound each. Check any polish words with it on G-monopoly-gle translate. And we also use the latin alphabet... its the western spelling's "genetic limitations" the problem not latinization itself ;-) English o is polish OŁ so yeah exactly a double sound OU. But we have more sounds than Koreans. Poles have also other monosounds as cz like in Chech(czek) China (czajna) which i would translate into korean as middle between Ch and H plus minimal sound EU (as in korean S(y)). In reality there are 2 big barriers. underlying 2. Learning from people who mess it up: Both foreigners who "learned" Korean... or Koreans who speak everyday Korean as it goes. Without conscious form & keeping homogenic systematic structure. Difference between speaking on street and a scripture in a temple. You should not take shortcuts before not grasping avoiding bad turns... Having a native eastern european langauge of satem type coming geographically & historically from the side closer to Iran and Asia naturally brings us korean closer. The died out Tocharian brothers from around Mongolia and north China regions would probably not have any trouble with Korean.

“Kinda looks like a butthole” you could stop it right there, everything was clear at that point ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

I was mostly confused, not because I have a hard time distinguishing them apart, but which letter was which. At the beginning I thought 어 was pronounced as 오 and vice versa. But then I was listening to native speakers and switched them. Then I watched a video while multitasking, and mistakenly switched them again.

Extremely helpful! Thanks!

Thank you! I really needed this video cause I was scared all the time that I will badly learn new words because I can't say 어 and 오 well. Your video really help me. Especially I understood the diffrence with your explain how the mouth is set and exercises at the end of video. 감사합니다!

thanks for this! lowkey was just gonna resort on eye-to-mouth contact to figure it out, but thanks for that last exercise

3:28 Please do it 3:38 YES! You never let us down

That's a video I was searching for! Thank you very much! ♡

Cleared my confusion up really nicely, thanks !

this is super helpful! 감사합니다 ♡

This is great! I could always tell the difference since I started speaking French at around 4 but I was never sure how to pronounce them haha

This was so very helpful as an English speaker. You're amazing, thanks!!

Wow! Thank you! It's funny because we have both sounds in Philippine languages but only represented by "o". /facepalm. 어 is very close to what we call "open-o" and 오 is close-o. We only have the English "o" in English. It's easier now that I made the connection with our own sounds instead of the English sound. It's now familiar. Thank you so much!

Thank you very much, I've been struggling with this since the day I started learning korean. 감사합니다!

Thank you for this..... truly truly helpful! And just wanted to add, you have such a nice voice.... pleasing to the ears😁

That helps soo much! 🙂 I was always so confused by ㅓ versus ㅗ and now it makes so much more sense!

Very late comment, I just found your channel. Picture a cave with a small entrance, ah, and a cave with a larger entrance, ooh. I learn best with sound and a mental picture.

Wowwww amazing explanation! I just need to practice a lot more, so with time it just comes natural! Thanks again!!! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Thank you so much for this video! I just started learning Korean this week and this helps a lot! I'll be watching all of your videos ;)

Fantastic video, thanks!

Thank you thank you thank you! It finally makes sense 😃

Thank you. Very helpful!!

very helpful thank you very much

so helpful! thank you so much!

감사합니다

Thank you! Techniques to really help us as we sharpen our listening skills!

I had a very hard time distinguishing these two thanks for making this video