Pronunciation of "mieum"

Question

I just started to learn Korean and I decided to start by learning to read. I learned the pronunciation of the letters "i" and "eu" which sound like "i" and "ö" in German, respectively. So far, so good.

Then I moved on to consonants with "m" being my first. And here is where I'm surprised.

Remembering the vowels I expected that "mieum" would be pronounced "mi-ö-m" but it appears to be pronounced "ma".

My question is: Is Korean like English in that some things are spelled differently from how they are pronounced? Or does "ieu" always become "a"? And if so, could it be spelled as "ma"? And is "m" never pronounced at the end of a word?

Thank you for your help!

Edit:

In this video here they pronounce all the letters with "u" instead of "a" 😅🙈:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ1rAAK3duk

And one with "eu":

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_wmPlTdVuJo

Answer 1

Although the app text says mieum(미음) (which is one of the ways in Korean of naming the letter 'ㅁ'), you are right that the actual recording is of the sound 'ma'(마). '미음' is not pronounced '마' in Korean.

Koreans do also say 'ka na da...'('가 나 다...') as the equivalent to English 'ABC...' (is it the same in German?), but it's a bit confusing that the app text says one thing, and the recording is of something else!

In general, Hangul spelling matches the pronunciation very well.

Answer 2

1) ㅁ has a name mieum as topo morto explained.

2) We can not pronounced ㅁ. But we know how it works in a word :

ma 마 mi 미 mu 무 me 메 mo 모 and so on. It can be pronounced with several ways, with respect to vowel or situation

3) Hence your application try to describe sound of ㅁ by comparing m in the exact word "man"

Korean pronounce man with 맨. Or Korean pronounce Freedman with 프리드만

At any rate, in the word man we cut ma and the application pronounced ma with 마.

Notice the description in the app " sounds like " But I agree that design of the app may confuse us.