Learning Journal #4

[Diego Mosquera]

Describe the phonetic inventory of your target language. Are there sounds in your language that don’t exist in English? Provide several phonetic transcriptions of important words. What do you need to know about the structure of your target language? How will you acquire the knowledge you need? Have you identified resources and textbooks to promote your task-based objectives? Why or why not?

          When comparing the respective phonetic inventories of English and Korean, one notices that there are more sounds in English than in Korean (Cho and Park; American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, “English Phonemic Inventory”; Pronouncer; American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, “Korean Phonemic Inventory”). Nevertheless, there are sounds in Korean that do not exist in English. The consonants that do not exist in English but exist in Korean are all plosive: p^h, like in 프랑스 (Phonetic Transcription: p^hɯlaŋsɯ; English: France); t^h, like in 태양 (Phonetic Transcription: t^hɛjaŋ; English, sun); c or ʣʲ, like in 저기요 (Phonetic Transcription: cʌɡijo or ʣʲʌɡijo; English: Excuse me); c^h, like in 차 (Phonetic Transcription:c^ha; English: car) ; and k^h, like in 코 (Phonetic Transcription: k^ho; English: nose). The vowels that are found in Korean but not in English are: ɯ, like in 그(Phonetic Transcription: gɯ; English: he); o, like in 오후(Phonetic Transcription: ohu; English: p.m.); and ɣ, like in 음악(Phonetic Transcription: ɣmag; English: music).

           During my studies of the Korean language, I have come to know that the sentence structures of English and Korean are very different. I had some difficulty with this concept as it required me to restructure the way in which I would form sentences regularly. In English, a simple sentence is made from an independent clause that has a subject followed by a verb. Nevertheless, in Korean the common sentence structure is: subject + verb or subject + object + verb. Since the verb ends the sentence, my learning partner (Joora) said that many argue that when listening/reading in Korean, it is important to read/listen up until the sentence is complete, otherwise one is unable to tell what exactly the subject of the sentence is doing.
            To acquire all the knowledge I need to complete the tasks outlined in my learning plan, I have been using resources such as my learning partner, Naver.com, YouTube, a Korean-English dictionary, and an online textbook found through UR website (Basic Korean: A Grammar and Workbook by Andrew Sangpil Byon). I have been relying a lot on this textbook because although many of the textbooks in the Global Studios are very useful, they are unavailable to be checked-out. As such, I use Byon’s textbook more often because it is very informative, portable and convenient.

 

Bibliography

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. “English Phonemic Inventory.” ASHA.Org,                       https://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/practice/multicultural/EnglishPhonemicInventory.pdf. Accessed 12 Feb. 2018.

---. “Korean Phonemic Inventory.” ASHA.Org, https://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/practice/multicultural/KoreanPhonemicInventory.pdf. Accessed 12 Feb. 2018.

Cho, Junmo, and Hae-Kyeong Park. “A Comparative Analysis of Korean-English Phonological   Structures and Processes for Pronunciation Pedagogy in Interpretation Training.” Meta : Journal Des Traducteurs / Meta : Translators’ Journal, vol. 51, no. 2, 2006, pp. 229–46.www.erudit.org, doi:10.7202/013253ar.

Pronouncer. “IPA Transcription of Korean.” Pronouncer, 8 Feb. 2015,https://pronouncer.org/guide-to-ipa-transcriptions/ipa-transcription-of-korean/.