What is the difference between sound and spelling? Why is this distinction significant for your language-learning efforts? Describe the phonetic inventory of your target language. Are there sounds in your language that don’t exist in American English? If so, provide several words and their phonetic transcriptions of words as examples to support your argument. What do you need to know about the sound system of your target language? How will you acquire the ability to discriminate differentiated segments in your listening, and to produce these sounds in your speech?
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Sound is something that can be heard, such as the way a word is pronounced, whereas spelling is something that comes in a written form in which words are put together with letters. This is particularly important in Korean, as the way words are spelled and pronounced does not always align with each other. There is something called “받침”s in Korean that does not exist in English. The direct and literal translation is “support”. These supporting characters often change the pronunciation and meaning of words. For example, “없다” means “does not exist” or “don’t/doesn’t have”, while “업다” means “piggyback” or “carrying someone on one’s back”. The difference in pronunciation is very subtle, but very significant nonetheless. There are actually a good number of sounds that exist in Korean but do not in English. “쌍” means “double” and in Korean ㅃㅉㄸㄲㅆ are “variations” of ㅂㅈㄷㄱㅅ, also known as composite consonants. Essentially, the pronunciations are extra stressed for each character. For example, dad in Korean is “아빠". “아바” is pronounced “ah-bah”, while “아빠" is pronounced “ah-ppah”. Despite the complexity of writing and spelling Korean, to many people’s surprise, reading is not that difficult once you generally have the pronunciation down! It is unlike English in which “ough” could make the sound of “f, oh, off, ooh, ow”. Korean is pretty straightforward in its pronunciation, which is helpful to know about the sound system. Overall, context is very important in Korean, which emphasizes the importance of listening. I hope to be able to listen to conversations and have a general idea and understanding of how a certain word should be spelled based on the context in which individuals use it in, and as a result, strengthen my spelling abilities so that I can confidently text family and relatives in Korean without making silly typos.
The difference between sound and spelling is that spelling is the written representation of a word, while sound refers to how that word is pronounced. Hangul may look straightforward, but the way they sound can vary depending on the word’s position or surrounding letters. For example, the same consonant might sound different when placed at the beginning of a word versus at the end. This distinction is crucial for language learning because focusing only on spelling may lead to incorrect pronunciation, which can cause misunderstandings.
In Korean, the letter “ㄹ” represents a sound that doesn’t exist in English, and distinguishing it is crucial for learners. The difference between sound and spelling is evident with “ㄹ”, as its pronunciation changes depending on its position in a word. Korean’s phonetic inventory includes several sounds not found in American English. When “ㄹ” appears at the beginning of a syllable, it sounds somewhat like a Spanish or Italian “r”. For instance, in "라디오" (radio), “ㄹ” is pronounced like [ɾ], a single flap, which is softer and quicker than the English "r." On the other hand, when “ㄹ” appears at the end of a syllable, it sounds more like an "l." For example, in "달" (dal, meaning "moon"), the “ㄹ” is pronounced like [l], but the articulation is lighter and faster than the English "l."
To master the Korean sound system, I need to be aware of how letters like“ㄹ” fluctuate and practice differentiating these sounds in various contexts. Listening to native Korean speakers in everyday contexts (like media and conversations) will help train my ears to detect subtle differences. To produce these sounds correctly, I will rely on shadowing, repeating words and phrases I hear, while paying close attention to tongue placement.
Sound is how language is heard while letters are how it is seen. This distinction is important because if you can spell perfectly but can’t say the words, you’re in trouble when communicating. On the other hand, if you can speak but are illiterate, that will also hamper your understanding (no websites, books, signs and directions, texts, captions).
Portuguese has only ~30 phonemes compared to English’s ~44. In Portuguese, eñe, cedilla, acute accents, circumflex accents, and tildes add extra phonemes to the alphabet of 26.
Em and Ão are nasalized sounds that don’t come easily to a non-native English Speaker. Mão becomes ˈmɐ̃w̃. If you plug ˈmɐ̃w̃ into an IPA reader, the sound difference between English and Brazilian readers is night and day. English speakers would pronounce this ‘meru’ while Portuguese speakers would nasalize it producing distinct sounds.
In a similar vein, the preposition “em” sounds remarkably different to English and Portuguese speakers. To English speakers, “Em” sounds equivalent to “M.” Examples like “Emma” or “emanate” come to mind. In Portuguese, it’s nasalized and “M” and “Em” are distinct.
Lastly, lha. From the phonetics websites I’ve explored, “millions” sounds like ˈmɪljənz while “trabalhar” in Portuguese sounds like tɾɐbɐˈʎaɾ. English speakers have difficulties with the “lha” sound.
I already know most of these common pronunciation pitfalls from taking a Portuguese class at UR. My listening difficulties are usually when I hear an accent I’m not familiar with or the speaker is squeezing sounds together in ways to which I’m not familiar. For example, my language partner Pedro will often have no pauses between prepositions and nouns. Separating parts of speech is my core difficulty currently with my comprehension.
Sources
http://ipa-reader.xyz/
https://tophonetics.com/
(Funny pronunciation video of tough Portuguese words I found: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/portuguese-language-pronunciatio...)