On the first day of class with Professor Kim, she asked everyone their names, and told us how they would be pronounced within the Korean sound system. My name, Sreya, would be 스레야 in Korean which is different from how it is meant to be pronounced. A difference that is easy to spot is that Sreya has 2 syllables and 스레야 has three syllables. The other differences are tough to explain because I don’t know the phonetic alphabet. I also tried really hard to find a way to write how 스레야 is pronounced in English but it’s tough to find the right English transcription for the pronunciation of 스. This itself shows that the Korean sound system has sounds that the English sounds system doesn’t and vice versa. Another example for this would be how the japanese word ラーメン [Rāmen] is pronounced as [ˈrämən] in English (ramen) and as [lamyeon] in Korean (라면).
Another thing that’s different about the Korean sound system is how two sounds can sound very similar but the difference in aspiration is really important otherwise you’d be saying a different word; for example, 게 means crab and 개 means dog. Luckily for me, Hindi and Telugu have sounds which are very similar to Korean sounds; for example, 에 and 애 in Korean are like ఎ and ఏ in Telugu, and 다 and 따 in Korean are like द and ध in Hindi. The sounds that I find difficult to pronounce are the ones which involve ㄹ or ㅡ because these sounds are new to me. I think that listening to Korean dialogue (possibly in Kdramas) more and trying to repeat them would really help with getting me used to hearing and speaking words which involve these sounds.
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