Substitute “word compound” with “words using hanmun/hanja” in my post just above, if you don’t mind.
Not sure what difference this makes, but perhaps it is just me.
Uhhm…then which dialect were you thinking of when you say that the word is like the ‘a’ in “hay”? It surely isn’t the standard one. I’m familiar with several dialects (in fact, I speak with one myself), but perhaps there is one out there that pronounces it like this. I am skeptical though.
Again, I don’t mean to say that it’s exactly like the ‘e’ sound in like “bed,” but Korean language learners would be (much!) better off by pronouncing it like this (It is, after all, how it sounds when pronounced quickly). This is where a lot of learners butcher the pronounciation. But, I don’t blame it on them, I put most of the responsibility on the textbooks that confuse them. It is a confusing issue.