I would describe the phonetics inventory of my target language as uncomplicated, especially compared to the English language. The Korean language contains 14 consonants and 10 vowels and are combined to create syllable blocks. This is a much smaller range of letters to work with than American English so the sounds that can be produced are limited. The only sound in particular I can think of that is difficult to imitate for those who do not speak Korean is the “ㄹ” sound which is a mixed sound of the English “l” and “r”.
Korean sounds lack labiodental fricatives such as “f” and “v” and replaces them with bilabial stops such as “p” and “b”. When I first moved to the States, I didn’t know that the “f” sound existed, so when my family watched soccer, I genuinely thought that pushing someone to the ground during a game was called a “poul” since my dad would repetitively yell it. It wasn’t until years later when I played with my friends when I realized that it was really called a “Foul”. Another sound Koreans do not use is the voiced alveopalatal fricative, “z” sound which is replaced by using “j”. However in Korean, you can usually tell how hard a letter should be pronounced just by looking at whether the word uses single or double consonants. A problem with this rule is that the English “s” tends to always be pronounced hard. When my friends try to pronounce my Korean name, they pronounce it with a hard “s” to produce a “ㅆ” sound instead of a “ㅅ” sound.
I need to know more about the sounds produced when combining two different consonants to better understand the sound system of Korean. There are multiple ways to spell a sound in Korean, but there is only one way to pronounce a sound. This will challenge me when writing in Korean since there are multiple ways to write something with the same pronunciation and I have to find the correct way, but will help me when differentiating sounds when I listen to Korean. My dad is currently taking classes to develop his English pronunciation skills, so whenever he needs help, I try to describe the pronunciations through the Korean alphabet. This makes me think about the relationship between the Korean and English phonetic system.
Comments