Wow, it's not easy to explain a mother tongue to non-native speakers, but I will give it a try.
Let's think of how to prounounce e
in English. When e
does not have an accent on it, it sounds like uh
. If it has an accent, it sounds like ee
or e
.
When one pronounces ㅎ
, if ㅎ
does not have an accent on it, one can replace it with ㅇ
. If one were to say 저 대학생을 봐
as 저 대악생을 봐
, most Koreans would understand the sentence. However, one cannot say 학교
as 악교
; since pronouncing the first syllable correctly is important when speaking Korean.
As for 사랑해
, one cannot say 사랑애
. You see, 해
means do
and acts as a verb. So 사랑애
is ambiguous, and being the main verb, that's an issue. So it's not the best way to go about pronouncing that, you see. If I, as a native speaker, heard someone say 사랑애
, I might misunderstand that (as spoken): 사랑에
. I would then expect other words (or phrases) to follow. You see, 에
is a post-positional particle (after which other words will follow). (e.g. 사랑에 죽다)
In the case of personal names, if one shares context with the listener, one might omit the h
sound which ㅎ
calls for. Otherwise, one should properly pronounce the ㅎ
character. If one pronounced a name as 김연아, the listener would hear the name as "Yuna Kim. But 김현아 is an entirely different person ("Hyun-a Kim"). 김수현 and 김수연 is a similar case (they are completely different if ㅎ
were pronounced as ㅇ
).