Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

Korea

UK /kəˈɹiːə/ · US /kəˈɹi.ə/ proper noun

Forms Koreas Corea

  1. proper noun A geographic region in East Asia, consisting of two countries, commonly known as South Korea and North Korea; formerly a single country.
  2. proper noun (informal) South Korea: A country in East Asia, comprising the southern part of the Korean Peninsula.
  3. proper noun (rare) North Korea: A country in East Asia, whose territory consists of the northern part of Korea.
  4. proper noun A peninsula in East Asia, containing the countries of North Korea and South Korea; in full, Korean Peninsula.

Synonyms

Korean Peninsula Dae-Han-Min-Gook Han-Gook

Etymology

First attested as Core in the 1598 English translation of the 1596 Itinerario of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, from the original Dutch Core, itself from Portuguese according to van Linschoten's account. The spelling Corea was more common in Early Modern English, likely through Core + -ia.
Ultimately a sixteenth-century borrowing by Europeans from some variety of Chinese. Compare Mandarin 高麗 /高丽 (Gāolí) but especially Hokkien 高麗 /高丽 (Ko-lê), which matches the Dutch-Portuguese vowels exactly.
These are Chinese pronunciations of Sino-Korean 고려(高麗) (Goryeo), Korea's official name between 918 and 1394 and still used by Chinese people to refer to the country for centuries thereafter; this itself being a shortening of 高句麗 (“Goguryeo”), an ancient Korean kingdom in the first millennium. Doublet of Goryeo, directly from Korean.
Some Korean authors claim an Arabic intermediary instead, but this is impossible because the actual medieval Arabic word for Korea was a variant of السيلى (al-sīlā, see also Silla).

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “Korea”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details