Spelling is the act of forming words through combinations of the language alphabet. Sound is the vibration that we hear through our ears, and it only deals with the oral aspect of the language. Being able to distinguish the different sounds in my target language is just as important as learning how to spell in my target language. Language learners learn their intended language through hearing the language over and over again. Listening to the language allows you to know the sounds that are incorporated into forming the language into what it is, and knowing the difference can improve my language-learning efforts.
In Korean, there are 14 consonants and 10 vowels. The 14 consonants are ㄱ,ㄴ,ㄷ,ㄹ,ㅁ,ㅅ,ㅇ,ㅈ,ㅊ,ㅋ,ㅌ,ㅍ,ㅎ. The 10 vowels are ㅏ,ㅑ,ㅓ,ㅕ, ㅗ,ㅛ,ㅜ,ㅠ,ㅡ,ㅣ. There are also double consonants and double vowels. Double consonants are ㄲ,ㄸ,ㅃ,ㅆ,ㅉ and double vowels are ㅔ,ㅖ,ㅐ,ㅒ,ㅘ,ㅝ,ㅟ,ㅢ,ㅚ,ㅙ, and ㅞ. Korean has 19 phonemes. The phonetic inventory of Korean consists of bilabial, alveolar, palatal, velar, and glottal. The only phonetic under the glottal is the consonant ㅎ, which would be the [h] in IPA. An example of the bilabial, fricative and aspirated sound would be ㅍ [p]. An example of alveolar, fricative, aspirated sound would be ㅅ[s]. Finally, an example of a palatal and affricate sound would be ㅈ [ts]. The majority of the consonant sounds are affricate and are either lax, glottalized, or aspirated.
One important aspect of the Korean sound system is voicing. Korean obstruents are voiceless when the word is initial. However, when the consonant is in the middle or the end, it becomes voiced. All vowels and the nasal consonants which are ㅁ,ㅇ (final), ㄴ, ㄹ are voiced. However, the rest of the consonants are voiceless when they are at the beginning of a word. For example, in 바보(babo)[pa̠ːbo̞], the initial ㅂ is voiceless while the final ㅂ becomes voiced since it is in between two vowels. The same goes for the word 안녕 (annyeong) [a̠nɲjʌ̹ŋ]. The initial ㅇ remains voiceless, while the final ㅇ is voiced, and you could hear the 'ng' sound. In the second example, I used the ㅇ consonant, which is pronounced as 'ng' when it is voiced.
Because my first language was Korean, I think I can already tell the difference between the sounds. Therefore, I think I can discriminate differentiated segments in my listening and produce these sounds in my speech. I do remember when I was learning English, no sound represented [f] in Korean. I had the most difficult time trying to pronounce words like "farm" or "pharmacy." I pronounced farm as “parm” like the parm in parmesan cheese and pharmacy as “parmacy.”
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