Some Korean words sound very similar to foreign ears, but native speakers don’t really seem to hear the phonetic proximity. Mostly, the appearance of similarity results from the combination of the same vowel with the same consonant cluster (they have beautiful exotic names in English, like “alveolar hissing sibilants”). I’ve encountered this over and over again, and here’s the result of this morning’s dictionary game, combining the a-sound with a voiceless velar plosive and sibilants: 사자 = lion사과 = apple작가 = writerSo, 사자가 사과와 작가를 찾아봐…If you can think of something more confusing, feel free to share it in the comments below.