Should I write ㄹ as r or l when romanizing?

Revised Romanization uses r at the start of a syllable and l at the end, which is why 서울 is Seoul and 라면 is ramyeon. The two letters describe the same Korean sound in different positions.

Do Koreans hear English r and l as different sounds?

Not automatically, in the same way English speakers do not automatically hear the plain and tense consonant distinction. Both take training, which is why the r/l pair is a well-known difficulty for Korean learners of English in exactly the mirror image of this problem.

Is the ㄹ in 라면 the same as in 달?

Same letter, same tongue movement, different timing. 라면 taps and releases; 달 arrives and holds. Learning to feel that as one sound with two endings is more useful than treating them as separate.

Making Sense of ㄹ, the Letter That Is Neither R Nor L

ㄹ is one letter and one tongue movement, but it lands as something like r at the start of a syllable and something like l at the end. Here is what is actually happening and how to practise it.

7 min read·2026-08-18

Every other Hangul consonant can be introduced with a rough English equivalent and left there for a while. ㄹ cannot, and pretending otherwise causes months of trouble.

The good news is that ㄹ is not two sounds you have to learn separately. It is one gesture whose result depends on how long your tongue stays in place.

One gesture, two outcomes

To make ㄹ, the tip of your tongue moves to the ridge just behind your upper teeth. That is the whole instruction. What differs is the timing.

At the start of a syllable, the tongue taps that spot and leaves immediately. The result is a quick flap, closer to the r in a briskly spoken "very" than to the English r in "red", which involves no contact at all.

At the end of a syllable, the tongue arrives and stays. Air flows around the sides, and the result is much closer to an English l.

•나라 (country) — the ㄹ begins a syllable, so it is a tap.
•달 (moon) — the ㄹ closes a syllable, so it is lateral, like l.
•사랑 (love) — a tap again, between two vowels.
•물 (water) — lateral, held at the end.

Why the English r is the wrong starting point

The English r in "red" is made by bunching or curling the tongue without touching anything. Korean ㄹ always touches. A learner who substitutes the English r produces something a Korean ear registers as odd but placeable, rather than as ㄹ.

If your first language has a tapped r — Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and many others do — you already own the sound. The Spanish r in "pero" is very close to the Korean tap, and borrowing it directly works well.

If your first language does not, the fastest route is through a d. Say "ladder" or "butter" quickly in a North American accent; that quick tongue flick in the middle is essentially the Korean tap.

When two ㄹ meet

Korean often ends up with ㄹ at the end of one syllable and ㄹ at the start of the next. The two do not become a tap plus an l. They merge into a single long lateral, held roughly twice as long as a normal one.

빨리 (quickly) and 몰라요 (I do not know) are the two you will meet first. The trick is to keep the tongue in place through the whole junction rather than lifting it between the syllables.

The same merging happens when ㄴ meets ㄹ. 신라, the historical kingdom, is pronounced closer to 실라, because the ㄴ assimilates to the following ㄹ.

ㄹ at the start of a word

Native Korean words essentially never begin with ㄹ. Words that would have — mostly Sino-Korean vocabulary and Chinese-derived surnames — change in South Korean spelling under a rule known as 두음법칙, the initial sound rule.

This is why the surname written 李 is spelled 이 in South Korea but 리 in North Korea, and why 로동 appears as 노동 in the South. The ㄹ becomes ㅇ before i or y sounds, and ㄴ elsewhere.

Loanwords are the exception and keep their ㄹ: 라디오, 레몬, 리모컨 all begin with it. If a word starts with ㄹ, it is a reasonable bet that it came from another language.

Practice that targets the right thing

Most learners can produce both variants in isolation within a day. What takes longer is switching between them at speed without thinking, which is what these drills are for.

•Alternate 라 and 알 slowly, feeling the tongue leave in one and stay in the other.
•Say 나라 and 날아 back to back. They are close in sound but the second has the ㄹ moving across the syllable boundary.
•Practise 빨리 and 몰라요 until the doubled ㄹ is one long hold rather than two separate contacts.
•Read 사랑, 물, 하늘, 서울 aloud in a loop. All four are common, and they cover both positions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I write ㄹ as r or l when romanizing?: Revised Romanization uses r at the start of a syllable and l at the end, which is why 서울 is Seoul and 라면 is ramyeon. The two letters describe the same Korean sound in different positions.
Do Koreans hear English r and l as different sounds?: Not automatically, in the same way English speakers do not automatically hear the plain and tense consonant distinction. Both take training, which is why the r/l pair is a well-known difficulty for Korean learners of English in exactly the mirror image of this problem.
Is the ㄹ in 라면 the same as in 달?: Same letter, same tongue movement, different timing. 라면 taps and releases; 달 arrives and holds. Learning to feel that as one sound with two endings is more useful than treating them as separate.