Is there an app that checks my Korean pronunciation?

What it checks

• Korean: jamo by jamo against the sounds Korean actually makes, so 옷이 is judged as [오시].
• TonePerfect aligns your recording with the text you were asked to say and scores the whole recording, each word and each individual sound inside each word, from 0 to 100.
• You read a known text (a test prompt or anything you type), so the score describes how you said exactly those words.
• Your weakest sounds are ranked, so you know what to practise first.

Batchim — the cut-off endings

Korean final consonants are stopped, not released. 책 ends with the tongue closed as for 'k' — never 'k-uh'. 집 ends with sealed lips. 옷 ends in a stopped 't', and the spellings ㅅ ㅆ ㅈ ㅊ ㅌ ㅎ all end with that same stopped 't'. Releasing the puff, or adding a little vowel after, is the single most common habit English speakers carry in.

ㄹ batchim — the held 'l'

A final 'l' with the tongue tip curled up to touch the ridge behind the teeth — darker and longer than the tapped ㄹ between vowels. Hold the contact.

ㅇ batchim — the 'ng'

The 'ng' of 'song'. Back of the tongue closes against the soft palate; the sound hums through the nose. Only ever at the end of a syllable.

ㅓ vs ㅗ

ㅓ is an open 'uh/aw' — like the 'u' in 'cut' said with the mouth a bit more open, lips NOT rounded. ㅗ is a rounded 'o' as in 'go' but pure, no glide at the end. English merges both toward 'oh'; Korean keeps them as two different words (어 vs 오). The lips are the whole difference.

ㅡ — the vowel English lacks

Say 'oo' but SPREAD the lips flat as if smiling. The tongue stays high and back while the lips refuse to round. There is no English substitute — this one you have to build from scratch.

ㅢ — two beats in one

Start from ㅡ (the flat-lipped 'oo') and glide quickly to 'ee' — two beats squeezed into one. Only at the start of words like 의사; elsewhere it reduces to plain 'e' or 'ee'.

ㄹ — between r and l

Between vowels it is a quick tap of the tongue tip — like the tt in American 'butter', never a rolled or English 'r'. At the start of a word keep it a very light 'r/l'. And in final position it becomes the held, curled 'l' — one letter, two habits to build.

Plain, aspirated, tense — the three-way contrast

Korean splits what English hears as one consonant into three: plain ㄱ (soft, no puff), aspirated ㅋ (strong burst of breath — feel it on your palm), and tense ㄲ (pressed and stiff, throat tight, no breath at all). Same for ㄷ/ㅌ/ㄸ, ㅂ/ㅍ/ㅃ, ㅈ/ㅊ/ㅉ, ㅅ/ㅆ. One honest note: at the start of a word, even native speech often hardens plain consonants toward tense — so the app can't reliably grade plain-vs-tense-vs-aspirated at the very start of a word. Practice the contrast in the middle of words, where it's clearest, and use aspiration (the puff) as your most trustworthy anchor.

ㅅ — the light 's' that shifts

A light, breathy 's' — softer than English 's', with a whisper of air through it. Before 'i' or a y-vowel it shifts toward 'sh' (시 sounds like 'shi'). Its tense twin ㅆ is a sharp, stiff hiss with no breathiness.

ㅔ/ㅐ — one sound, two spellings

An 'e' as in 'bed'. Spellings ㅔ and ㅐ are pronounced the same by nearly all modern speakers — treat them as one sound and let spelling be a memory task. Same story for ㅞ/ㅙ/ㅚ: all three are 'we' as in 'wet'.

연음 — sound-change rules

Korean words change shape when they meet. A batchim slides onto a following vowel (밥을 sounds like 바블), ㅎ between vowels nearly disappears (좋아요 sounds like 조아요), and consonant clusters assimilate. TonePerfect scores the surface pronunciation — what Koreans actually say — not the letter-by-letter spelling, so linked speech is graded as linked speech.