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Haegeum

Musical Instrument
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A Korean two-stringed vertical fiddle with a sharp, nasal tone, used in court and folk music

Detailed Definition
The haegeum appears in poetry as a voice of Korean emotional intensity and historical lament; its piercing sound conveys han (collective sorrow), and poets use it to express resilience, cultural specificity, or the tension between tradition and modernity in lyrical form.
Example
Example in poetry:
The haegeum’s nasal cry “voices han like a wound that sings”; In a Korean lyric, its two strings “are sorrow and resilience twisted together”; The instrument appears as “the soul’s raw throat after silence”; A modern poem uses haegeum to express cultural tension and continuity.
Additional Notes
The haegeum’s sharp, nasal tone—produced by a bow passing between two strings—is central to Korean sanjo (scattered melodies) and court music; in poetry, it conveys han (collective sorrow) and cultural specificity; students should recognize its timbre as a deliberate aesthetic of expressive tension, useful for analyzing how dissonance and vocal mimicry shape emotional depth in East Asian lyrical traditions.
Also Known As
Haegum Korean fiddle
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