Pronunciation and Integrated Korean Introduction

A ramble about learning to pronounce Korean correctly.

I started learning the Korean language just to quench my curiosity about the sounds I was hearing in Korean Dramas.  I could detect patterns and differences in word order, and it seemed this great puzzle, or maybe a game of Calvin-ball where I didn’t know the rules.

I slowly worked my way through ‘Read and Speak Korean for Beginners’ and Tuttle’s ‘Mastering Conversational Korean:  Korean for Beginners’.  Then I tried ‘Integrated Korean: Beginning I’ a textbook used in colleges, and it almost killed my Korean learning.  I couldn’t plow thru this book, no matter how determined I tried.  So I kept trying, stopping, picking it up again, and re-reading the same introduction.  I spent 6 months reading the introduction and first 2 lessons.  It was simply too hard for me.

Luckily, I have just discovered a better way to learn pronunciation than what was in the Integrated Korean introduction.  Go watch the Learn Korean Online free videos Video #1c: Reading the Vowel-Consonant Blends.  First 1 hour gives you everything about Hangul, including hearing the sounds, seeing how the instructor’s mouth looks when making the sound, and introduction to pronunciation rules without scary terms like plosive, fricative, and palatalization.  “Simple explanations in plain English”.  Amen!

It was just like Rooftop Prince, with the chart of Korean letters and being drilled how to pronounce them!  robkor Lesson 1 (Vowel-Consonant Blends) – PRINTABLE VERSION

Still, I’m in the mood to complain (haha), so I will tell you about the Integrated Korean introduction and what I’ve gleaned from the 9 Hangul Pronunciation rules by rewriting them pretending the letters are buddies.

‘Integrated Korean’ starts out with an introduction that goes over the sounds of Korean.  It would have probably helped if I had purchased the accompanying audio CD’s.  I did find audio files on their website, however that is only when you make it past the introduction to the actual lessons.  The introduction covers all the sounds of the Korean language with exercises, but no sound to go with it.  For someone like me who started without knowing a single Korean speaker, it was like I was deaf.  I wasn’t sitting in a classroom watching the teacher’s mouth as they spoke the various sounds.  I was reading sentences like the following:

The only exception is that ㄴis pulled to the hard-palate position before the palatal vowel i or the semivowel y, as in 언니 and 안녕.  The pronunciation is called palatization, in that the ㄴ is assimilated to the palatial vowel or semivowel.

There were 35 pages of sentences like above before they got around to telling me how to say hello.  Phew!

It was accompanied by strange diagrams that made me think I had wandered off into an anatomy text.  Epiglottis? Vacal? Velum?  Is this English? HAHA.

In the inital consonant position, Korean allows a three-way voiceless contrast (plain/aspirate/tense) in plosive consonants, a two way contrast (plain/tense) in fricative consonants ㅅ/ㅆ, and no contrast (plain) in ㅎ.

This came with a chart mapping plosive, fricative, liquid, and nasal against lips, gum ridge, hard palate, soft palate, and throat for each of the letters.  My eyes crossed.  Say what?  I made more sense out of other folks telling me to say the letters with my hand in front of my mouth to notice which letters caused a puff of air (aspirate).  Also, that double letters sound harder (tense) like ㅅ and ㅆ.

I read that there are bright (ㅏㅗ), dark (ㅓㅜ), and neutral vowels (ㅡ ㅣ) and that a bright and dark vowel will not combine into a single syllable block to form a dipthong, but chose to just file that away as something I just don’t care about right now.

Then there were pages of Hangul pronunciation rules.  I’m fairly certain these are important to memorize, but I have yet to internalize them.  Here’s my interpretation of the rules.

1.  Resyllabification.  A consonant might slide up from the bottom of one syllable to the top of the next if it is a lonely vowel.  (The second of the two consonants in a syllable-final position is carried over to the next syllable if this syllable does not have an initial consonant.)

2.  Syllable-final closure (release).  At the end of words, consonants are said without air.  I think of this as being lazy and running out of breath by the end, so you just end up whispering ㅂ, ㄷ, ㄱinstead of the harder, air-propelled letters.  Ex.  잎 [입]ib and  꽃[꼳] kkot

• ㅂ,ㅍ [ㅂ]
• ㄷ,ㅌ,ㅅ,ㅆ,ㅈ,ㅊ [ㄷ]
• ㄱ,ㅋ,ㄲ [ㄱ]

3.  Nasal assimilation.  Nasal consonants [ㅁ,ㄴ ] are bullies. If they are behind plosive or fricative consonants, they will force them to sound like nasal consonants [ㅁ,ㄴ,ㅇ].

Ex. 입만 [임만]

• ㅂ,ㅍ [ㅁ]
• ㄷ,ㅌ,ㅅ,ㅆ,ㅈ,ㅊ,ㅎ [ㄴ]
• ㄱ,ㅋ,ㄲ [ㅇ]

4.  ㄴ to ㄹ assimilation.  When ㄴ and ㄹ come together, the  ㄴ is usually replaced by the ㄹ sound.  So when buddies  ㄴ and ㄹ get together, ㄹdoes all the talking.

Ex. 칠년 [칠련]

5.  Tensification. When [ㅂ,ㄷ,ㅈ,ㄱ,ㅅ] are preceded by a plosive or fricative consonant, it is reinforced to become a tense consonant, as in 몇번 [멷뻔].  Those full of hot air consonants are bad influences who make their friends  [ㅂ,ㄷ,ㅈ,ㄱ,ㅅ] louder.

6.  Aspiration and the /ㅎ/ weakening. ㅎsound depends on the following vowel.  ㅎ combines with  [ㅂ,ㄷ,ㅈ,ㄱ,ㅅ] to make corresponding aspirated consonant [ㅍ,ㅌ,ㅊ,ㅋ].

Ex. 좋다 [조타]

Between two voiced sounds, ㅎ tends to become silent in casual speech.

7.  Double consonant reduction.  If rule 1 slides a double batchim consonant up to the next syllable to cozy up with a vowel, it is all good.  If not, then we have two consonants clustered together, which is a problem in Korean.  So one of the consonants needs to be silent.  Assume it is the second one.  Correct yourself if you hear the word pronounced differently.

8.  Palatalization.  When a word ending in ㄷor ㅌ is followed by i or y, the ㄷor ㅌ are pronounced ㅈor ㅊ. Just makes sense because it is hard to say otherwise.

Ex. 붙이다 [부치다].

9.  Place assimilation.  Lazy folks say it this way.  In casual speech

[ㄷ ] is pronounced [ㅂ] before ㅂor ㅃand [ㄱ ] before ㄱor ㄲ

[ㄴ] is pronounced [ㅁ] before ㅂ,ㅃ,ㅁ and [ㅇ] before ㄱor ㄲ