Korean → Malay
Malay uses 32 sounds. You already own 19 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: alveolo-palatal → postalveolar
Malay: love · written "c"
c is ALWAYS ch — cawan, cuci, kucing.
Your /t͡ɕ/ is the one in 집 (house).
the move: alveolo-palatal → postalveolar
Malay: road / to walk · written "j"
Your /d͡ʑ/ is the one in 아주 (very).
the move: alveolar → postalveolar
Malay: gratitude · written "sy"
Arabic loans.
Your /s/ is the one in 사람 (person).
the move: alveolar → labiodental
Malay: to understand · written "f"
Arabic loans; colloquially /p/: paham.
Your /s/ is the one in 사람 (person).
the move: voiced
Malay: era · written "z"
Arabic loans.
Your /s/ is the one in 사람 (person).
the move: alveolo-palatal → velar
Malay: news · written "kh"
Arabic loans; many speakers just say /k/: kabar.
Your /ɕ/ is the one in 시간 (time).
the move: plosive → fricative
Malay: unseen / supernatural · written "gh"
Arabic loans; often just /ɡ/.
Your /ɡ/ is the one in 고기 (meat).
the move: tap → trill
Malay: house · written "r"
Tapped or lightly trilled; often dropped at the end in Malaysia (besar → besa).
Your /ɾ/ is the one in 우리 (we; our).
the move: it glides, yours would hold still
Malay: beach · written "ai"
Your /a/ is the one in 나라 (country).
the move: it glides, yours would hold still
Malay: island · written "au"
Your /a/ is the one in 나라 (country).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Malay 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.
no / not
Final k = glottal stop, the catch in 'uh-oh'. tidak → 'tida'.'
Closest thing you own: — but fricative → plosive.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| Korean | Malay | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed, phrase melody | Syllable-timed |
| 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. | Light and non-contrastive, usually on the second-to-last syllable — and it shifts when suffixes are added, without any effect on meaning. No Malay pair is distinguished by stress, which is one of the reasons Malay is regularly called the most approachable major language to pronounce. |
What you have that Malay doesn't
15 sounds with no job in Malay. 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 Malay 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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