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I noticed that whenever I say 낳아, whose standard pronunciation is [나아], ㅎ assimilates to [ʕ] rather than vanishing.

The exact same phenomenon occurs whenever I say 쌓아 or 닿아. I presume I add [ʕ] to every word whose ㅎ as a trailing consonant must vanish.

There are few other places where my pronunciation differs from the standard:

  1. When ㅅ,ㅆ,ㅈ,ㅊ is followed by ㅅ, I pronounce the former consonant as [ㅅ], where the standard pronunciation is [ㄷ]. Examples include 맛살, 맞선, and 빗살. I know [ㅅ] as a trailing consonant was present in medieval Korean.

  2. I occasionally pronounce tense consonants ([ㄲ], [ㄸ], [ㅃ], [ㅆ], and [ㅉ]) as ejectives. As far as I know, ejectives or any other non-pulmonic consonants have never been present in Korean, apart from onomatopoenias.

  3. When a trailing consonant [ㅇ] lacks a following consonant, I pronounce it as if 연음 (sorry for not knowing the English term) happened. For example, I pronounce 상어 as [사ᅌᅥ]. I presume many people do this, yet contemporary Hangul dropped this feature.

But I have never heard about whether [ʕ] has been in Korean. Has it?

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  • As far as I know, there has been no Korean consonant that explicitly expressed pharyngeal fricatives. You can sometimes hear people pronounce it unconsciously, though. Commented Apr 20, 2020 at 3:54
  • Regarding 1, I don't think anyone actually pronounces (ㄷ/ㅅ/ㅆ/ㅈ/ㅊ)+ㅅ cluster as [ㄷㅆ] (or [ts]). In fact, I don't think the standard (~Seoul area) dialect ever contains the sequence [ts] (though I'm not an expert).
    – jick
    Commented Apr 22, 2020 at 17:13

1 Answer 1

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  1. 닿아 etc used to be pronounced [다하] as late as the 19th century. For example,

    몽고국 모ᄃᆞᆫ 변방을 건너 바로 경셩에 다하시니 ≪1883 이언 3:3ㄴ≫

    The intervocalic /h/ probably was [ɦ ~ ʕ] before it vanished.

  2. Are you sure you are pronouncing them as [mas.s͈al] instead of [ma.s͈al]? In other words, is there a minimal pair between [맛쌀] and [마쌀]?

  3. 상어 as [사ᅌᅥ]

    Again, are you sure there is a minimal pair between [saŋ.ʌ] and [sa.ŋʌ]?

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  • I'm sure that there is a minimal pair between [맛쌀] and [마쌀]. I pronounce 역마살 as [영마쌀], not [영맛쌀] or [영맏쌀]. I don't think there is a minimal pair between [saŋ.ʌ] and [sa.ŋʌ], though. (Resulting in case that [상어] doesn't have a problem in transcription) Commented Apr 22, 2020 at 10:53
  • To analyze it more accurately, it seems I pronounce 역마살 as [jʌŋ.mɐʔ̰.s͈ɐl], where ʔ̰ is the creaky glottal approximant. Very strange. It still contrasts with [mɐs͈.s͈ɐl], though. Commented Apr 22, 2020 at 11:05

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