Discussion Post #10

[Isaac Choe]

If I was given a research grant, I would definitely study the points of emphasis in Korean. Growing up, I would always hear a sort of soft palatal, or even glottal sound used whenever someone wanted to emphasize something. For instance, the ㅎ character is essentially just the letter H in English, however, in Korean, I often heard a fricative sound in their soft palate area, as well as holding the sound longer for emphasis. In English, and I would surmise in most other languages, holding parts of a word longer (particularly vowel sounds), is used to show this emphasis. I’m curious about the genesis of this, perhaps a glottal/soft palatal sound was once used in Korean? Are other East Asian languages like this as well? I’ve asked my parents this, as this is most definitely a “Korean-Korean” thing, used primarily by older speakers–– it’s not too common that you’ll hear this among young speakers. Additionally, the confluence of Confucianism in Korean is quite piquing to me, perhaps I can start there and go onward to see its impacts on prosody. From what I understand, Confucianism shaped King Sejong’s perception of how language should be expressed, symbols representing different parts of the mouth, and though this arrangement may not be an exactly ‘scientific’ way of finding why Koreans emphasize with their throats, I would certainly love to look more closely at this proclivity.