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Open this feature on the website: koreaneasy.com/sound-words

Overview

Sound Words (의성어, ui-seong-eo) are Korean onomatopoeia — words that phonetically imitate the sounds they describe. This page presents 24 entries grouped into four themed categories.

Sound groups

GroupDescription
AnimalSounds made by animals
PeopleSounds made by people
NatureNature and weather sounds
ObjectSounds made by everyday objects

How to use this page

  1. Browse each group to see the Korean word alongside its meaning.
  2. Say each word aloud — the words are designed to mimic the sound they describe.
  3. Notice how Korean sound words often differ from English equivalents (e.g. dogs say 멍멍, not “woof”).
Sound words are great for building intuition around Korean pronunciation — they’re memorable, fun, and often come up in everyday speech and comics.

Word pairing

Test your vocabulary recall with a Korean–English matching game

Dictionary

Browse all words, including the full collection of sound words