There are sounds in the Korean language that don’t exist in American English. There are five double consonants which are pronounced in a more emphasized manner of its single consonant counterpart. Not all of the consonants have double consonants, but the consonants “ㄱ”—giyeok, “ㄷ”—digeut, “ㅂ”—bieup”, “ㅅ”—siot, and “ㅈ”—jieut all have double consonants. Double consonants, just as it says, are double consonants. For example, the double consonant for “ㄱ” is “ㄲ” and the double consonant for “ㅂ” is “ㅃ”. The name for a double consonant only differs from the consonant by the addition of the word “ssang” in front of the consonant, which makes sense because the word “ssang” translates to pair or twin in English.
As I mentioned before, the double consonants –“ㄲ” ssanggiyeok, “ㄸ” ssangdigeut, “ㅃ” ssangbieup, “ㅆ” ssangsiot, and “ㅉ” ssangjieut—are more emphasized in pronunciation than its single consonant counterpart. It’s emphasized in a manner that’s more curt –similar to the idea of a stop as mentioned in the reading. For example, the consonant ㄱ produces the “g” sound like in American English. However, the ㄲ produces an in-between sound of a “g” and a “k” –there’s another consonant that produces the “k” sound, but I didn’t mention it in this post because it doesn’t have a double consonant. The ㄲ is seen in the Korean word 꽅 which means flower. It’s pronounced “kk-oh-t”, or more succinctly, “kkot”. In another example, the ㅆ is used in the spelling for the double consonants “ssang”, or in Korean, “쌍”. As you can see in the American English name of double consonants, there is a double s. This represents the difference in the emphasis and the strength of the “s” sound in the single consonant ㅅ. The double consonants sound almost aggressive because they are so sharp. But it’s important to note that when speaking, the double consonant part of the word is not stressed like in American English. Furthermore for ㅆ, the “ss” pronunciation is not like the sound of a snake or an elongated sound of the consonant, but rather it’s an emphasized pronunciation of its single consonant counterpart.
The Korean language is notably an easy language to learn and that’s in part due to the fact that there’s a smaller consonant inventory than the English language. There are also no unfamiliar consonants, voiced/unvoiced distinctions, difficult consonant clusters, change in tones, or meaningful vowel length. The double consonants are perhaps the only aspect that requires extra effort because the pronunciation is not heard in American English. There’s a difference in aspiration and tenseness in such consonants. Fortunately, I have experience in the Korean language being a Korean American, so I’m able to refer to the Korean words that I know as examples during my lessons. This allows me to gain a better understanding of how and why certain words are pronounced the way they are. Due to this, it was a lot easier for me to understand and pick up the rules a lot faster.
Replies
I definitely agree that the double consonants do pose difficulties for non-native speakers as there are times when I describe things in Korean but notice that there are not any similar sounding words in the English language which would have made it harder to speak Korean if I had not known grown in a Korean American household
I definitely agree with you and the rest! As a native Korean speaker, I used to have difficulties in pronouncing the double consonants, so I had to practice more! I cannot imagine how difficult it would be for non-native speakers.
After doing your Korean lesson and spelling the names of different drinks, this, especially double consonants all make a lot of sense!
I have definitely encountered people who have trouble with pronouncing the double consonants. For example, some people call 짜파게티 chapagetti instead of jjapagetti. I am glad that because I was born in Korea, I still remember have retained the phonetic ability to use double consonants. However, I remember when I arrived in America, I was not able to pronounce my rs. So I was not able to differentiate word and world.
The other day, I was telling my FYS teacher some words that had double consonants such as the word dad which is "아빠". I never noticed that it was a sound that cannot be produced for English speakers because my teacher struggled couple of times trying to say the sound "ppa" (빠). This made me wonder how even though our language is very easy to learn which is proved by the studies since it was constructed with how we shape the mouth to pronounce each sound, it may be hard for those who are learning it as a second language with certain languages that do not have similar phonetics. This made me wonder how I would have approached the language if I did not have my bilingual abilities. I wouldn't have had the sound in my sound dictionary to be able to produce it easily and fluently.