Unsurprisingly, Korean does indeed differ from English! The Korean alphabet lays the basis of the sounds of Korean. In Korean there are 14 consonants (ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ) and 10 vowels (ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ) for a total of 24 letters. In addition to the 10 vowels, Jannette has taught me the “layered” vowels too which have been especially hard for me to differentiate between since they sound extremely similar. One of the most interesting consonants in Korean to me is ㅇ (ieung) which has no sound. I have never encountered a “sound” like this before in any other language. According to an article, the purpose of this soundless consonant is because in Korean a word cannot start with a vowel. This is because Hangul vowels are intended to support a consonant. Another interesting part of the Korean alphabet is that by adding a line to the basic consonants the pronunciation becomes stronger (ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ ).
Additionally, Korean has 19 consonant phonemes. As Hudson mentions in section 3.1 of “Phonetics,” there are five types of consonants that vary in the way they are articulated. In Korean, the stops and affricates have a three-way contrast between the unvoiced segments. These segments can be plain, tense, or aspirated. The plain consonants include ㅂ, ㄷ, ㅈ, and ㄱ. The tense segments are ㅃ, ㄸ, ㅉ, and ㄲ. Lastly, the aspirated segments include ㅍ, ㅌ, ㅊ, and ㅋ.
This chart from the book The Sounds of Korean does a great job of depicting the phonetic sounds of Korean. The consonant rieul (ㄹ) is a liquid phone which is described by Hudson in section 3.1.5.1. I have also found that rieul is probably the hardest letter in Korean for me to pronounce.
Korean does not have direct sounds for c, f, q, v, w, x, y, and z from English. As I said above the sound of the consonant rieul was completely new to me as I had never heard this sound in English. The closest translation would be a mix between [r] and [l] but even then it is a bit difficult to perfectly pronounce rieul. The word Sunday in Korean is 일요일 (pronounced close to Ee-ryoil) has rieul in it. Since this word contains two rieuls it is a bit harder for me to pronounce. When learning Korean, it is important to know where the stresses are in the language and how the speech pattern differs from English. I read that Korean is a syllable-timed language while English is a stress-timed language. This means that in Korean individual word stress is not important and the rhythm of Korean is based on the syllables. On the other hand, English is based on stressed and unstressed syllables. This concept will be helpful when I am speaking to make my Korean sound more authentic as well as guiding my intonation with words.
Although I can and will continue to read about these pronunciation differences, the best way for me to get better and truly understand the phonetics of Korean is practice. I will rely on Jannette to correct my pronunciation and when I am not with Jannette I will watch videos for pronunciation help. Understanding the concepts behind phonology is helpful but practice with a native speaker is the best way for me to get better at differentiating and reproducing Korean sounds and words. Another helpful part of working with my language partner has been recording her pronouncing the words we learn each week and the alphabet so that I can listen to the recording when practicing myself. For fun, I can also listen to music (Kpop) and watch K dramas in order to get an ear for and become accustomed to the sounds pattern of Korean. Immersion really is one of the best ways to learn a language!
References:
https://koreanjun.com/core-grammar/hangul/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology
https://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/KoreanPhonemicInventory.pdf
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/korean.htm
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