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Have you ever seen this letter ‘ㅅ (시옷)’ randomly sitting in the middle of Korean words? Like in:

• 바닷가 (seaside)
• 칫솔 (toothbrush)
• 잇몸 (gums)
• 햇빛 (sunlight)

Long story short, that ‘ㅅ (시옷)’ is there to mark the boundary of a compound word phonetically. Hangul is a phonetic alphabet, meaning we write words exactly how they sound. That is a huge strength, but it has one major downside.

Take this sentence:

• 나는 바다가 좋아.

Without that ‘ㅅ (시옷)’, this sentence could actually mean two completely different things:

• I like the sea.
• I like the seaside.

Here is why. ‘바다’ means sea, and ‘가’ is the subject marker. But ‘가’ also means “edge.” So when you put them together to say “seaside”, it looks exactly the same as “the sea” with a subject marker!

Since our vocal organs are limited, we can’t create infinite sounds, and homophones are bound to happen. To prevent this confusion, Korean places a ‘ㅅ (시옷)’ in between the two words when forming a compound word. This is called ‘사이시옷’ (in-between 시옷). So, ‘seaside’ is written as 바닷가 instead of 바다가.

In 바닷가, the ‘ㅅ (사이시옷)’ acts as a quick stop sound, which forces the following syllable ‘가’ to be pronounced with tension, like ‘까’. The same goes for:

• 해 (sun) + 빛 (light) = 햇빛 (sunlight)
• 치 (tooth) + 솔 (brush) = 칫솔 (toothbrush)

Honestly, even native Korean speakers get confused about when to write it, so you don’t have to memorize the rules. Just knowing why it’s there will make your reading so much easier!