# Hospital



## stevenleung0000

I am learning Korean now. And I encounter this word.
병 원
I know how to read the first character, but I am confused with the second one.
The teacher taught us there are only 4 types of characters.
1. Vowel
2. Vowel + consonant
3. Consonant + vowel
4. Consonant + Vowel + Consonant/Double Consonant

But in my understanding, there are 2 vowels and 1 consonant in the second character "원"
( 우 ,ㅓ, ㄴ)
And when I look it up online, it pronounces as "won"
Where does the w sound come from??


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## oosky

it came from ㅇ


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## malgeul91

ㅝ /wʌ/ is one of the diphthongs in Korean, which consists of:
ㅜ, which is normally pronounced /u/, and ㅓ, which is pronounced /ʌ/.

However, in this case, since ㅜ itself is not a syllable but a part of the diphthong ㅝ, you can write it as /w/ instead of /u/.

In English, "w" and "y" are often considered as consonants. But they are actually semivowels (or glides) which are phonetically very similar to "u" and "i". And Koreans tend to consider them as as the front parts of "double-vowels", which is the direct translation for 이중모음(diphthong).

FYI : If you pronounce /u/ and /ʌ/ very quickly, you will hear /wʌ/!


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## malgeul91

oosky said:


> it came from ㅇ


ㅇ is just a filler, which has no phonetic value (which is silent) in that position.


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