My target language, Korean, has some words that do not exist in American English. That is one of the reasons why my tutor, Seonghye Kim, wanted us to learn the Korean alphabet, Hangul, first. She said that it is easier to properly pronounce the letters and words when reading it in Hangul rather than the romanized way. The letter that stands out most to me is ㅡ. It is very difficult to pronounce that letter because it sounds like “eu” in cook. I personally have to bite my teeth to say it properly so, therefore, it helps to have the phonetic and Hangul symbols. The IPA symbol for ㅡ is [ɯ], a back close-mid vowel. A whole word containing that letter is juice: 주스. In phonetic alphabet it is written as [ʝusɯ].
Furthermore, there are some letters in Korean that sound very similar. ㅓand ㅗ are two very similar sounds. ㅓsounds like ɒ, while ㅗ sounds more like o. Two word examples for this are manners and cutting board. Manners is written like 매너 and sounds like [ɱæɢɒ] in IPA. Cutting board is written like 도마 and sounds like [toɱɑ] in IPA.
It is crucial in Korean to know the box structure of words. Depending on where in a word the letter appears it can have a very different sounds. The most significant one is 0. If 0 comes in front of a vowel, it has no sound and makes the vowel a pure vowel. However, if it comes at the end of a syllable, it sounds like [ɲ]. For example the word hello, 안녕하세요, has multiple 0, with the first and the last one not having a sound, while the second one sounds like [ɲ]. In IPA, hello in Korean sounds like [a̠nɲjʌ̹ŋɦa̠sʰe̞jo].
The main approach I am taking to being able to produce these sounds in my speech is to listen to as many recordings, videos and lessons as possible. The more I hear a word, the easier it is for me to imagine how I would write it for myself to remember and how to properly say it. I have already formed some techniques to overcome difficulties, for example, biting my teeth to say ㅡ.
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