Discussion Post #4

[Isaac Choe]

One of the things that drew me to my heritage language, Korean, was its spelling component. The characters themselves represent of the mouth’s position and shape, which is so incredibly fascinating to me. Plosives are very common in Korean’s phonemic inventory, and they are typically, or exclusively at times, much more aspirated compared to English sounds. For instance, the G sound in English has a similar character in Korean (ㄱ), but this velar stop, to my ears, blurs the line between voiced and voiceless depending on the word, or the vowel that follows it. So, for most Korean language learners, learning ㄱ seems like a simple enterprise, until they realize the nuances behind the voiced vs. voiceless can be a bit more complex (and this is just one example). Perhaps my favorite relationship between spelling and pronunciation, however, is the “ㅅ” character. In most cases, it is pronounced exactly like the letter “s” in English, but when paired with the vowel, “ㅣ”, (similar to “ee”), this 시 sound creates a “shee” sound, rather than a “see” sound. This fricative change is a key distinguisher in Korean, you will never hear a “see” sound, which is notable as there is no demarcation for this fricative change in its spelling.