The Korean alphabet, Hangeul, consists of 24 letters: fourteen consonants and ten vowels. They are pieced together into blocks of syllables and produce a combined sound. For example, the "han" in Hangeul is a combination of the [h] consonant, [a] vowel, and the [n] consonant. There are sounds in Korean that do not exist in English, and there are also sounds in English that do not exist in Korean. A few English sounds that don't exist in Korean are /v/, /f/, and /r/. In Korean, the [v] sound is actually pronounced as a [b] sound. "Vitamin" would be pronounced "bitamin." The English [f] sound is pronounced as a [p] sound in Korean. Instead of "phone," it's pronounced like "pone." Since Korean has a [l/r] sound that's different from the English [r] sound, many native Koreans usually have a difficult time saying words like "girl." Also, because English doesn't have that [l/r] sound, many native English speakers struggle with it. Also, there are five Korean consonants that have a "double" form, which does not exist in English. For instance, the word "bul" ([b̥ul]) is different from "ppul" ([pul]) which is also different from "pul" ([pʰul]). The /pp/ is the double consonant of the /b/ sound.
Knowing more in depth about the sounds in Korean and learning the phonetic transcriptions will help me understand and improve my pronunciation. Even though I have some prior knowledge about the language, I still struggle with certain sounds. For example, I do not understand the difference between the /ae/ ([æ]) vowel and the /e/ ([e]) vowel. I also have trouble with /wae/ ([wæ]) and /we/ ([we]). They sound the same to me. I think paying more attention as I'm listening to Korean and going back to the basics and repeatedly practicing would help me improve.
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