In our lessons, we worked on reviewing the simple consonants and simple vowels and also introduced the double consonants and complex vowels. My language instructor used charts again to go through the new characters and explained when its used. For consonants, there are five consonants for the consonants: “ㄱ” [ɢi-ək], “ㄷ” [di-ɢʉt], “ㅂ” [bi-ʉp], “ㅅ” [ʂi-ot], and “ㅈ” [d͡ʒi-ʉt]. In Korean, the name for each double consonant have the word 쌍 [saɴ] in front of the consonant and the character itself is just written twice: “ㄲ”, “ㄸ”, “ㅃ”, “ㅆ”, and “ㅉ”. As for pronunciation, the double consonants produce a harsher sound of its simple counterpart. For example, the double consonant “ㄲ” has a [q] sound rather than a [ɢ] sound. The double consonant “ㄸ” has a [t] sound rather than a [d] sound. The double consonant “ㅉ” has a [ɖ͡ʐ] rather than a [d͡ʒ] sound. As for “ㅃ” and “ㅆ”, there’s no IPA symbol I found that could accurately represent its sound, but the main importance is that its pronunciation is just an emphasis on the sound of the simple consonant.
I found complex vowels to be more difficult in memorizing. Although I’m able to understand the concept of how the sound is formed, I struggle in remembering which vowels are combined with each other. There are also some complex vowels that sound the same but are written differently. For example, “ㅐ” [æ] and “ㅔ” [e] both sound like [e] due to their subtle differences in pronunciation. This is why it’s fairly indistinguishable in the modern Seoul dialect, but I’m sure that it varies among other Korean dialects. To make matters even more complicated, there are no rules for the use of “ㅐ” and “ㅔ”, so you just have to memorize the spelling of these words. Despite the notable similarities in sound, they are still definitely different. She said that “ㅐ” resembles the “a” in the word “bad” and “ㅔ” resembles the “e” sound in the word “bed”. It’s a common mistake that even proficient Korean speakers make when writing, so she said to be aware of when I see it used in what word which will help me when it comes to writing sentences.
I set a personal goal to practice the complex vowels at least every day, but I definitely struggle in consistency. So, to compensate, I always make sure to take my time in reading Korean words when I see it on certain posts on social media or on food containers at home. Basically, wherever I see Korean I have to take the time to sound it out. It has been pretty exciting that I can now associate proper sounds to Korean characters instead of just seeing lines and circles. But it also has been pretty frustrating because it takes me quite some time to sound out each of the consonants and vowels. Also, there are certain rules that I’m not familiar with like the bottom characters of words and I’m still working on memorizing the alphabet. I’m still excited because my instructor said we’d be learning about bottom characters soon, so that should help make things easier when it comes to reading.
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