Hangul – ㅅs and ㅆ ss

This tenth jamo in the South Korean writing system is letter ㅅ (siot). It is the 7th in the North Korean writing system.

Incidentally, both alphabets consist of the same letters but because of where the stressed consonants are placed, differences exist between the writing systems.

Just like the order of the English alphabet, the letters are in an arbitrary order. I digress.

ㅅ (siot) is pronounced in a variety of ways. The most simple way to remember it is that it looks like a seashell. However, it can be pronounced like an s, an sh and sometimes like a t. I get that this can be a challenge to a beginning learner. Sometimes in Korean, depending on where a letter falls in the syllable or word, and what comes after it, the pronunciation is different. When ㅅis followed by some vowels, it becomes a sh sound. Since we haven’t gotten to the vowels in this series yet, I won’t go into detail as this is intended to be a basic introduction. But a quick google search will provide you with a multitude of reading materials on the nuances of the Korean language.

ㅆ ss

The double consonant ㅆ (sang siot) is a stressed s sound. However, this consonant often comes at the end of a syllable and in that case the pronunciation is different. You pronounce ㅆ with a t sound like ㄷ(t) when it comes at the end of a syllable.

Don’t Get Overwhelmed

I want to end by reminding you that ALL languages take a lot of time to learn and learning Korean is going to be hard learn. My students often ask me “what language is the easiest to learn?” and honestly all languages are hard to learn.

Korean is a challenging language to learn for English speakers. I am still a novice learner myself, I’ve only been learning (at my own pace and only self directed) for just at a year. I started June 2019, and I am still so achingly beginner it makes me frustrated sometimes. But patience.

Go back to Learn Hangul. You can also look at resources to learn to read Hangul.