One thing I noticed in Korean is that stress on different syllables doesn’t change the meaning of the word, making Korean sound flat compared to English. I notice this when I emphasize different places in a sentence in both English and Korean. This is why I don’t think Korean speakers don’t understand sarcasm as easily since it requires different emphasis of words in a sentence in English. I think it will be easier to go from a more dynamic language like English to a more monotone language like Korean since the emphasis on syllables won’t matter as much.
In English, the /θ/ and /ð/ sounds such as in there, clothes, and thirst don’t exist in Korean. The /v/ sound in English is represented as a /b/ sound in Korean. The /f/ sound doesn’t exist in Korean, so I noticed that when I hear native Korean speakers talk in English, they replace the /f/ sound with a /p/ sound. For example, phone will turn into Also in Korean language, the /r/ and /l/ sound is combined into just a single /l/ sound. For example, "ramen" in English will sound more like "lamen" from a Korean speaker. I can foresee myself having difficulty distinguishing between the /tɕʰ/ sound /tɕʰ/, which is the "jj" and "ch" equivalent in English. In the past, I also had difficulty distinguishing between the /e/ and /ɛ/ in Korean.
I can learn to distinguish these different sounds by watching Korean drama episodes and news segments. Keeping these phonetic differences in mind will help me improve my speaking and listening as I progress in learning Korean.
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