The phonetic inventory in Korean, Hangul, is comprised of 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Although the majority of the sounds made from hangul are similar from the sounds from alphabets, there are a few exceptions. There are sounds from hangul that sound as if they are in between two alphabet sounds. For example, the hangul ‘ㅈ’ has a sound between the english alphabet ‘j’ and ‘z’. The word ‘자유’, which means freedom, is pronounced as ‘jayoo’, with the ‘ja’ sounding similar to being between ‘j’ and ‘z’. There are also times when some consonants can be doubled up to make an even more emphasized sound. For example, ‘ㅃ’ is the same thing as two ‘ㅂ’. ‘ㅂ’ would make an equivalent sound to english alphabet’s ‘b’, but makes a similar sound to ‘pp’ when doubled. An example of this would be the word ‘빵’ which means bread, and is pronounced as ‘ppaang’.
One of the two things that people need to know about when learning Korean is that Korean is less fluid language compared to english. While some words can just roll off the tongue smoothly, each words are heavily syllabled, and is distinctly sounded out when speaking and writing. Another thing is that multiples of consonants and vowels can be used for words and for single syllables.
In order to acquire the ability to discriminate differentiated segments, I believe that listening to more Korean, such as from movies and shows, will be the main source of resource. By listening to daily conversations, I believe I will be able to improve by mimicking the sounds and repeating them multiples of times to get the pronunciation correctly.
Comments
Interesting post, Jenna. Please be careful with the distinction between sound and spelling. Even though there are 10 written vowels in Hangul, there are probably closer to 18 phonemic vocalic sounds. Take a look at the following Wikipedia page for Korean phonology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology. I think you're right in stating that Korean tends to have heavier emphasis on stress, tone, and tension. Can you provide an example of how "multiples of consonants and vowels can be used for words and for syllables"? Are you referring to diphthongs?