Korean → Italian
Italian uses 30 sounds. You already own 17 of them from Korean. The other 13 are the work — and 12 of those are the dangerous kind: close enough to something you already say that you will substitute them without hearing yourself do it.
The silent swaps
Your mouth has something close enough to reach for. These survive for years precisely because they sound right to you — the fix is hearing the difference first, not trying harder.
the move: velar → palatal
Italian: gnocchi · written "gn"
Your /ŋ/ is the one in 강 (river).
the move: alveolar → postalveolar
Italian: fish · written "sc(i)", "sce"
Your /s/ is the one in 사람 (person).
the move: alveolo-palatal → postalveolar
Italian: hi/bye · written "c(i)", "ce"
Your /t͡ɕ/ is the one in 집 (house).
the move: alveolo-palatal → postalveolar
Italian: day · written "g(i)", "ge"
Your /d͡ʑ/ is the one in 아주 (very).
the move: alveolar → labiodental
Italian: hunger · written "f"
Your /s/ is the one in 사람 (person).
the move: alveolo-palatal → alveolar
Italian: pizza · written "z", "zz"
z is /t͡s/ or /d͡z/ — lexical. Default here: /t͡s/.
Your /t͡ɕ/ is the one in 집 (house).
the move: alveolo-palatal → alveolar
Italian: zero · written "z", "zz"
Your /d͡ʑ/ is the one in 아주 (very).
the move: voiced
Italian: mistake · written "s (before voiced consonant, often between vowels)"
Between vowels northern speakers say [z] (casa → kaza), Tuscany [s].
Your /s/ is the one in 사람 (person).
the move: open → open-mid
Italian: beautiful · written "e", "è"
Your /a/ is the one in 나라 (country).
the move: approximant → lateral
Italian: son · written "gl(i)"
Like the 'lli' in million, but one palatal sound.
Your /j/ is the one in 여자 (woman).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Italian sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
Genuinely new
Nothing in Korean sits close to these. They sound foreign in your mouth — which is the good news: you can hear that you are not saying them yet.
wine
Closest thing you own: — but alveolar → labiodental, voiced.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| Korean | Italian | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed, phrase melody | Syllable-timed + long consonants |
| Stress | None at word level. No syllable is reduced and no vowel becomes a schwa; every syllable is said in full. What an English ear hears as stress is the phrase-initial rise. | Contrastive. The default is the second-to-last syllable, and the accent is only written when the stress falls on the LAST one (città, perché). Words stressed on the third-from-last (àncora, prìncipi) are common and unmarked — the dictionary is the only way to know. |
What you have that Italian doesn't
17 sounds with no job in Italian. They are not mistakes — but they are where an accent leaks in, because a sound you own is easy to use when a hard one is due.
The honest caveat
This is a prediction from the shape of two sound systems, not a recording of you. It says what your inventory makes likely — it cannot know that your Korean has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned Italian from someone whose accent you copied. A teacher listening to you beats it. Use it to know what to listen for.
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