[Pronunciation] "How to Sound Natural" 자연스럽게 말하는 방법 - Excerpts from Lecture by Kyung Ah Cecilia Chun

안녕하세요!

We had a special culture class where anyone who is taking one of the Korean American Center Irvine Sejong Institute’s Korean class currently can enter and participate in the the one hour class for free. Last week we had a class on pronunciation and intonation led by teacher 경아선생님.

So in this class we learned some ways to make yourself sound more natural when you speak Korean. One way is to use a lot of connecting words. So these 4 connecting words can come in handy:

그리고 and (conversationally: 그리구) changing the valve for the last syllable from to you could evil

그런데 but, by the way (conversationally: 근데)

그래서 so, therefore (conversationally: none)

그러면 then, if so (conversationally: 그럼)

And there are some filler words that you can use to make yourself sound a little more natural. So there are five of them:

저기 excuse me, wait (저기, 하루 씨! Excuse me, Haru!)

음 um (음, 그럴까요? mm, shall we?)

제 생각에는 I think (제 생각에는 맛있는 거 같아요 in my opinion, I think it’s delicious)

그게 let’s see, I mean (그게… 나도 잘 모르겠어. I mean… I’m not sure about it either)

아 Oh! Well- (아, 안녕하세요?)

So I don't know if this really helped you but these are some ideas if you want to work on sounding more natural as a Korean language learner. So this is one example that we can put together to make sentences spoken with these filler words so here we go:

아, 안녕하세요? 저는 지니고요. 오렌지 카운티에 살아요. 음, 저는 코리안 드라마 좋아해요. 반갑습니다.

(Ah, hello! I’m Jini and I live in Orange County. Mm, I like Korean dramas. Nice to meet you!)

So that is good for today. 경아선생님 수고하셨습니다 (Teacher Kyung-Ah, you did hard work!) for leading the class were planning so well and that's it for today. 다음에 만나요! (See you next time!)