Talk:Korean/Alphabet

Classification of Vowels
I'm a native Korean speaker (i.e. born in Seoul, so native Standard Korean speaker, to be precise), and when I pronounce the words, it seems 의 (or ㅢ, but... more on that below) should be a pure vowel. IMHO (I have no references) it's analogous to um-lauted vowels in German--it's just 으 pronounced at the more front part of the vocal tract.

On the other hand, when I pronounce 외 or 위, the ones marked as pure vowels I feel my mouth changing shape as I pronounce the syllable--and I thought that was what marked diphthongs from vowels.

Also, I believe y in "ya" (or 야) is a consonental y (or j in some Indo-European languages). While I'm not sure how that would classify the vowel, but I don't think it's a diphthong, strictly speaking. Andrew B. Park 14:46, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm a purely native Korean speaker. born in Korean, never went to abroad before. Sorry for my humble writing, but I'm trying my best to delieve my thought. IMHO, 야 (or ya) is more similar to 'ya'(or I will say exactly same), than 'jya' or that kind of 'j in some indo-european). I'm still in learning in phonetic sounds of english. --TimewalkerCharon 01:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * There is no difference between "ya" and "ja", if "j" is what is called "consonantal i". This particular sound is written, depending on the language, as "i" (Latin, in original orthography), "j" (German, in particular), or "y". However, there is phonological difference between a vowel that comes after a consonantal i and a vowel-like sound that is a diphthong. I myself am not a linguist, so I can be wrong, but diphthong has much more change in the shape of the mouth during the pronunciation of the sound.
 * BTW, what do you mean by "purely" native speaker? It almost sounds like "purely" pregnant. One is either pregnant or not. Likewise, one is either a native speaker or not at all; there's no "mixed" native speaker (for example, the second-generation Koreans in U.S. are not native speakers of Korean at all, in the same way Koreans who moved to U.S. and speak English fluently are not native speakers of English). novakyu (talk) 06:00, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Description of Consonants
For many Koreans (I think) initial ㅇ is considered more as a placeholder than "silent," as there are true silent consonents (i.e. ones that probably were pronounced earlier but are not pronounced now), whereas ㅇ is there just to keep the square shape of the character). A good example of silent sound would be 'l' in 닭 ('d-a-lg'). I think most Koreans have the capability to pronounce the 'l' there (just in the way some American dialect pronounce 'l' at the back of the mouth as in "cold"), but in formal education system, it is taught to be pronounced identical to 닥 ('d-a-g'). The 'l' comes out only when 닭 is followed by a vowel, in which case ㄹ and ㄱ separates (in speech, not orthography).

Also, Korean consonants are minimally voiced. I don't think any end-of-syllable consonants are voiced in Korean (as it is in English sometimes), and I would even question whether ㄲ and any such consonants are voiced (it may be more similar to unaspirated 'k', as in "skip" in some American dialects then to 'gg', to mean simply 'g' with extra stress on the consonant). And even ㄱ or ㄷ cannot be pronounced by itself (all Korean sounds must be "supported" by a vowel--whereas in English people have no problem pronouncing consonants by themselves, as we can see in "street." In Korean, this one-sylable word must be stretched to three sylables to "support" each consonant with a vowel: 스트릿, or even four 스트리트. It's difficult to mark the pronounciation in Roman Alphabet, as 으 sound doesn't exist in English. Andrew B. Park 14:46, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't speak Korean. I find the Korean language very complicated. The romanization does not follow the pronunciation of Korean words, it changes according to conditions like you mentioned. Romanization works well for Japanese and even Chinese but fails for Korean, in my opinion. The example of dalg you gave, I had always thought hanguel was pronunced exactly as they appear, therefore dalg, when actually it's dag, as you said.

Correct, it is pronounced totally as they appeared as those letters are symbolization of our articulator.


 * I find there are several problems with learning Korean:
 * 1. The extra vowel sounds of ㅡ (eu), ㅓ, (eo). I can hear there's a very slight difference to the normal vowels of a, e, i, o, u but personally I find the sound difference so small that I don't understand why these 2 sounds aren't abolished. Compare that Japanese abolished "yi, ye" characters and just use "i, e". The only way I'd know to use eu or u, o or eo would be to memorize the written version. Otherwise, I wouldn't have a clue which one to use. As for ㅐ (ae), it seems similar to ㅔ(e). I haven't even mastered these sounds. Very difficult.
 * Andrew B. Park 01:22, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC) There is a slight difference. ㅡ has a wider mouth shape than ㅓ when pronounced. Now, it is true that the difference is very slight and will probably be lost to non-Korean speakers, but as there exists a minimal pair 걷다 (to walk) and 긋다 (to draw a line), the distinction still must be retained (and probably will be taught as different sounds to those learning Korean as second language, much the same way we learn extra vowels when we learn one of the European languages (er, French?) that has more vowels than English). ㅐ and ㅔ are also different, but ever so slightly. ㅐ has a slightly wider and more tense mouth shape (closer to ae; ㅔ is more like e), and as before, ㅐ and ㅔ also have a minimal pair: 개 (dog) and 게 (crab). However, even for a native Korean speaker, these sounds are difficult to distinguish in everyday speech (so we just tell "dog" apart from "crab" from context), and in fact, I believe they are taught as non-distinguishable here in U.S. (at least in the Korean class I took in high school). Well, if it helps, I think of Korean writing system as a function (or "mapping") from set of written characters to sounds that is not one-to-one. i.e. There is only one way to pronounce a given Korean character, up to "natural" sound changes (that is, natural to a speaker of Korean, of course...), but more than one way to write any given sound. (English is much less phonetic--a case in point: how do you pronounce "gh"?) So spelling is still a problem (after all, why would Korean grade schools have spelling quizes if it were intuitive and trivial?), and memorization is still the only way for some cases, albeit not as much as in English.
 * 2. Another problem is k/g, t/d, p/b, ch/j, and r/l. Which sound should be used? Some people might tend to try and sound out the G or K sound when they see ㄱ or get confused which romanization should be used to represent them. Likewise for ㄷㅂㅈ. I've been told that the sound is pronounced in between such as Japanese R (between R/L). This is the safest method to use since those sounds are very similar and works well when reading hanguel, but how to represent them in English? If only there were special characters or just stick to G, D, J, R. Then there's the instruction to change L and R to LL when they appear at the end and beginning of the next hanguel. 절라 (Jeolla), I used to think it was jeon ra.
 * Andrew B. Park 01:22, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC) ㄹ is most accurately described as a sound between r and l. In fact, a good way for Koreans to pronounce 'l' (such as in "Los Angeles" when it's not pronounced at the back of mouth like in "bald") is by pronouncing ㄹ twice. In the case of "Los Angeles" if a Korean says 을로스 엔젤레스 where first 을 is pronounced very short, it will sound closest to American pronounciation of the word (note that there are two ㄹ's wherever there's one 'l'). As for ㄱ (and all the other sounds like it), I think it's most correctly pronounced like 'g' in English. However, there's a slight distinction. If you say "ga", your vocal cord will vibrate sooner than if you said 가. i.e. No voicing for ㄱ. But the distinction is very slight--I can barely notice it when I look for it (even so, it maybe some sort of panacea effect). For the most part, g -> ㄱ, k -> ㅋ, etc. is probably most correct approximation. (Now, k -> ㄲ might be more appropriate for some context, e.g. skip -> 스낍 rather than 스킵, which is actually a mark of Korean accent (that is, to prounounce "k" in "skip" identically to that in "cat"), but the classification of ㅋ and ㄲ is a bit tricky, I think. Here's what I think I know: i) neither of them are aspirated. ii) they are both alveolar plosives. iii) the distinction is... it takes a little more effort (muscles more tense) to pronounce ㄲ. All of this is somewhat needless and confusing detail and k -> ㅋ works well for most cases... of course, until you try romanizing ㄲ. But for most cases, "k" will probably work better and I think "gg" is almost as good as writing ㄲ as it is, since no one will have an idea how to distinguish it from "g".
 * But, back to ㄹ, it is probably identical to Japanese R (I don't know Japanese, so I can't say for sure, but I think this was the rule of thumb--Korean has all the sounds Japanese has). And it is most correctly romanized as "r". I think the rule to change L and R to LL is sensible (as although there is no real sound difference between L and LL, LL denotes that there were two ㄹ's there instead of one), however, in the example you gave, the correct romanization would be "jeon ra." Reason: The correct Korean spelling is 전라 (as in 전라도, one of the provinces of Korea, I think). However, it is pronounced identical to 절라 due to consonant assimilation (or 자음동화; this is "natural" for Korean speakers, as Koreans find it difficult to pronounce ㄴ (at the end of a syllable) and ㄹ (at the beginning) with no break in-between). Now, when we get to romanization, it's a matter of principle, I think. IMHO, I think any romanization must reflect the original orthography (when we "romanize" (although we don't :)...) German words, we don't rewrite "Guten Tag" as "Guten Tak" because that follows English pronunciation more closely). In that case, we should romanize Korean syllable by syllable, and that would give "jeon ra." Romanizing the whole word as a unit gives "jeolla".... but, anyway. You see that your confusion was well-warranted--there is no consensus even among Koreans... or the Korean government is simply not advertising its standardization very well (note to self: check Korean website for romanization standard guidelines).
 * 3. Thirdly, I was so tempted to use ㅢ (eui) ui, ㅚ (oi) oe, ㅙ (oae) wae, ㅘ (oa) wa, ㅟ (ui) wi, ㅞ (ue) we, ㅝ (ueo) wo. Brackets being the romanization I would've used. It's a bit strange to use W for characters that uses ㅗ or ㅜ (ㅟ wi, ㅙ wae -- uses W when either U or O starts the character). Just an example of how the romanization doesn't reflect hanguel one-to-one.
 * Andrew B. Park 01:22, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC) Well, true. In fact, I don't think Korean sound has "w" (i.e. consonental w), and thus Koreans can't (or at least I couldn't) distinguish pronunciation of "woman" and "ooman" (if there were such word). I think if there are no published standards (i.e. something preferably published by Korean government, not ad-hoc by another frustrated scholar) for romanization, the ones you suggest here are probably more appropriate.
 * 4. I've had some confusion over pronunciation of hanguel ending in ㅅ(t),ㅆ(ss),ㅊ(ch). When I first encountered them, I found it strange. Do the endings sound out when connected to the next hanguel? I noticed some words composed of 2 or more characters are pronounced together (slides into the next character, instead of pronounced individually). -- [[User:Mkn|Mkn (Talk)]] 15:54, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Andrew B. Park 01:22, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC) Ah. At least for this I have a concrete answer :). The sounds ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅌ, ㄷ, ㅈ, and ㅊ are pronounced identically when they come at the end position of a syllable. For example, 갓, 같, 갇, all sound the same, when pronounced by itself. (This is the justification for keeping the orthography, as the difference comes out by different pronounciation when the syllable is followed by a vowel or by ㅎ, etc.) Anyway, when pronounced by itself, they are most close to "got" in English ("god" has that voicing at the end, which Korean lacks). Perhaps this is one case where romanization should be done by the word... (since pronunciation of the whole word reveals the original orthography better than separate pronunciation of a syllable). Additionally, ㅂ and ㅍ have the same sound at the end position of a syllable and likewise with ㄱ and ㅋ. Now... for the combined consonants, well, it looks tricky... Since Korean doesn't (at least officially) allow two consonants right next to each other within a syllable, only one of them must be pronounced. I think the priority goes in this order: ㅂ>ㅅ>ㅁ>ㄹ, where each consonant is a representative of the group that sound alike. Most Koreans get around this by trying to pronounce both syllables. :) Oh, and yes, you did note correctly that double consonants are separated when followed by another syllable, most commonly when it's followed by a vowel. There are some other (rather complicated) sound changes that occur as well... (one example is 밭이 ("farm" in what might be called nominative case) being pronounced identical to 바치), but once you learn the (complicated) rules, they follow the rules very well--I don't think there are any exceptions (that can't be explained by an additional rule, which the original set of rules should have contained...).


 * Andrew B. Park 01:22, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC) So, all in all, yes--you are very right to be confused. Korean is a very complicated language (I always thought I was lucky to be born Korean, so that I don't have to learn Korean as second language :)...), but another thing is that Korean is very regular (most certainly in pronunciation, and I think even in grammar). There may be many rules, but once you learn all the rules, you will find no exceptions (and the rules don't sound as arbitrary as, oh, the rules for Ancient Greek seems sometimes).

Authoritative Source
Here's just about as authoritative a source as can be found on Romanization of Korean (mostly in English, although it helps to be able to see the Korean characters (and even better if you know about standard sound changes--i.e. when the sound of a word is somewhat different from orthography--in Korean)). And it has some additional information classification of sounds (although sans any explanation or justification, as it still escapes me why ㅚ and ㅟ are considered simple vowels). novakyu 12:26, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maybe a Slight Overhaul?
I've been working on this korean section for a couple days now. The template for the whole thing is great, but some of the pages seem to be lacking detail that is required for newbies to learn. The tables on this section are well organized and look great. I feel that there must be a bit more emphasis on aspiration and tensification of consonants. Since there haven't been any major updates to this page in recent times, I think that I will go ahead and divide some of the tables, while keeping to the original format as close as possible, to reflect these differences. I feel that this will help students discern whether the vowel should be more aspirated (for instance, b or p) and also a slightly more accurate knowledge of pronounciation in general. I'll leave it alone for the next few days to see if anyone has any objections to this, but if there is no reply or people feel it is a worthy update, I'll go ahead and do it. - Iamgravity 05:14, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Conflicting diphthong reports
The page Korean/Alphabet contained the following comment:
 * (10 or 8? conflicting information given by Korean Ministry of Culture and Tourism (10 basic vowels, 11 diphthongs) vs. western scholars (8 basic vowels, 13 diphthongs); the link provided below says there are 10 basic vowels. Does anyone have a reference for what western scholars say?

One possible reason for the conflict is the possible misunderstanding between the words diphthong and digraph and the possible disagreement about whether certain jamo (e.g. ㅐ) are in fact diphthongs or even digraphs. The iotized vowels (ㅑ, ㅒ, ㅕ, ㅖ, ㅛ, and ㅠ) are definitely diphthongs. Most of the compound vowels (ㅐ, ㅒ, ㅔ, ㅖ, ㅙ, ㅚ, ㅝ, ㅞ, ㅟ, and ㅢ) are clearly digraphs. Two of the compound vowels (ㅐ and ㅔ) were diphthongs in Middle Korean but are no longer in modern Korean. Anyway, I changed the text to work around the confusing diphthong issues. Rodasmith 02:18, 17 May 2007 (UTC)