Korean Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers and students of the Korean language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
How is the 'ㅚ' vowel pronounced in Korean?
According to Wikipedia, it seems to be analyzed as /ø/, a monophthong, but to my ears, it sounds like /we/, or a 'ㅗ' followed by a 'ㅔ' sound.
This /ø/ vowel also seems to be rather close to the Korean /e/ and /ɛ/, so is it perhaps the case that I am simply hearing /ø/ as /e/ and the previous consonant is actually labialized?
Nowadays, it is almost always pronounced as a diphthong just like 왜, i.e. as /wɛ/. In the past it was often pronounced as the monophthong /ø/ but has almost completely been replaced now by the diphthong pronunciation. You may hear a very old speaker pronounce it /ø/, but I don't think any young speakers still do.
The case of 위 is the same; it used to be pronounced asa monophthong (I think /y/, like the french 'u'), but now is almost always pronounced /wi/.
