16
votes
Accepted
Pronunciation of 의
The rule to pronouncing ㅢ is:
Like ㅣ when directly following a consonant: 무늬 (/무니/), 희망 (/히망/)
Like ㅔ or ㅖ when used as a possessive marker: 구글의 정책 (/구그레 정책/), 너의 마음 (/너예 마음/)
Like ㅣ in the middle of ...
- 7,536
16
votes
Accepted
Did actual 한글 characters have different sounds?
Of course, every language undergo sound changes over time, and Korean was certainly not an exception. Let's go over each sounds and see how they changed.
The current mainstream vowel change ...
- 7,536
13
votes
Why is 'ㅂ' in '박물관' pronounced as /p/ instead of /b/?
The Korean sound ㅂ does not correspond exactly to the English sounds /p/ and /b/. In fact, while the Revised Romanization uses a 'b' to represent initial ㅂ, the McCune-Reischauer romanization uses a '...
- 6,014
10
votes
Accepted
Pronunciation of ㅚ
Nowadays, it is almost always pronounced as a diphthong just like 왜, i.e. as /wɛ/. In the past it was often pronounced as the monophthong /ø/ but has almost completely been replaced now by the ...
- 6,014
10
votes
Accepted
Does standard Korean still contain any signs of being a tonal language?
According to The Korean Language by Iksop Lee and S. Robert Ramsey, modern Korean dialects have either tones or vowel lengths or neither, but never both (see map below). The authors do recognize that ...
- 2,049
9
votes
Accepted
Why is 눈 pronounced the way it is?
The phenomenon you're hearing has been described not just in academic literature but also in more modern learners' guides to the Korean language. It is an example of initial denasalisation. Basically, ...
- 2,533
8
votes
Did actual 한글 characters have different sounds?
Yes! A good example is the vowel ㅐ(ae). As you can see it is a combination of ㅏ(a) and ㅣ(i). So its original sound was ㅏㅣ(ai). But now it is pronounced as ㅐ(ae).
Add 1: An article from the Joongang ...
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8
votes
Intonations in Korean
Be careful not to mix up tones and intonation.
A language with tones will distinguish words with different pitches or pitch contours - this means that you can have two words with the same phonemes, ...
- 6,014
8
votes
Accepted
Is there any rule for the pronunciation of 닫히다 as tachida not tathida?
This is called 구개음화 (palatalization), and it's one of several assimilation rules in Korean. It occurs when ㄷ or ㅌ is in the 받침, and is followed by a syllable beginning with 이:
같- + 이 = 같이 [가치]
굳- + ...
- 6,014
6
votes
Accepted
Pronunciation of '자' vs '쟈'
They are not distinguished properly in modern Korean. It includes 자/쟈, 저/져, 주/쥬, 조/죠, 제/졔, 재/쟤 and ㅊ and ㅉ-equivalents too. This is because ㅈ(/t͡ɕ/) is already palatalized in modern Korean, or at ...
- 7,536
6
votes
Why is 꽃잎 pronounced as 꼰잎?
There is a rule that words cannot begin with ㄴ/ㄹ+[i/j], as explained in this question. That is, they cannot begin with 니, 냐, 녀, 리, 료, 류, etc. Exceptions are recent borrowings. But this rule was not ...
- 6,014
6
votes
Accepted
Korean hangul with voiced, unvoiced and aspirated or not aspirated
I can tell you right now.
(Always) Voiced: all vowels, ㄴ, ㅁ, ㅇ(final), ㄹ
(Conditionally) Voiceless: ㄱ, ㄲ, ㄷ, ㄸ, ㅂ, ㅃ, ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅈ, ㅉ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅎ
(Strongly) Aspirated: ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅅ, ㅊ, ㅎ
Not (strongly)...
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6
votes
Accepted
Is ㅎ ‘labial’, glottal or both?
You're right, the consonant ㅎ is pronounced differently depending on the following vowel. In linguistical terminology, ㅎ has several allophones:
When followed by ㅜ, ㅟ, ㅝ, ㅞ, possibly ㅗ, ㅘ, ㅚ, ㅙ: it ...
- 6,014
6
votes
Accepted
Do all Sino-Korean words have exactly one reading?
Probably you know that a Hanja character may have more than one pronunciation. For example, 樂 has seven different pronunciations, 락, 악, 낙, 요, 료, 록, 로. (낙 is derived by the word-initial rule 두음법칙 ...
- 1,387
5
votes
Accepted
Pronunciation of two consecutives ㅇ
The letter ㅇ at the beginning of a syllable isn't pronounced and the letter ㅇ acts as a filler letter. In addition, when a syllable starts with ㅇ and the previous syllable ends with a consonant, the ...
- 7,536
5
votes
Accepted
Is there an offensive word or phrase a learner might accidentally say by mispronouncing "젓가락"?
좆까라 literally means "show me your penis", and figuratively means "fuck off". For obvious reasons, it only makes sense when heavily stressed and aggressively used towards a man.
Given context and its ...
- 484
5
votes
Accepted
How do you pronounce 너 + 가 = 네가?
This is pretty much an exception: it is indeed mostly pronounced as [니]. However, do note that it is technically [네] (dictionaries list this as the phonetic spelling), and it's only the common usage ...
- 1,360
5
votes
Why do the pronunciation for Vowels assume the Consonant ㅇ?
ㅇ in inital position is now a filler letter for syllables which lack a inital consonant. But it was not 600 years ago.
In 1443, when Hangul was designed, King Sejong, the inventor of Hangul, had made ...
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5
votes
Why do the pronunciation for Vowels assume the Consonant ㅇ?
Simply writing ㅐ, ㅡ, or ㅏ is incorrect in terms of how syllable blocks are expected to be written in Korean. All syllable blocks contain a beginning consonant and a vowel (or compound vowel) to follow ...
- 1,009
5
votes
When to use single (ㅅ) or double (ㅆ) consonants?
There's no rule for when to use ㅆ vs. ㅅ, just as there's no rule for when to use /b/ and when to use /p/ in English - they are separate phonemes, so you just have to memorize it. One thing that is ...
- 6,014
5
votes
Does standard Korean still contain any signs of being a tonal language?
(Disclaimer: Everything below applies to Korean spoken around Seoul area. I don't know the state of vowel length distinction in other areas.)
Well, the sentence you partially quoted already answers ...
- 7,452
5
votes
Does standard Korean still contain any signs of being a tonal language?
My parents were born and lived in the Gyeongsang region for over 30 years; and I was raised near Seoul. And sometimes, when I say something, they laugh and say "that's not how you say that word," and ...
- 7,536
5
votes
Pronunciation of 옷이 with linking sound
When we read the word 옷이 slowly, the 받침 ㅅ is pronounced as ㄷ.
No, it's not. It's always pronounced [오시], no matter how slow you read it. Unless somehow the 이 part was obscured while 옷 was being read, ...
- 7,536
5
votes
Pitch accent in Korean
That Wikipedia article(now fixed) is mistaken. Seoul Korean lost its pitch accent system at least since the 17th Century. The article is citing nothing related to an evidence supporting an existence ...
- 7,536
5
votes
Accepted
Pronunciation of 낯익다
I would have expected the ㅊ to have been voiced in the second syllable because of its initial ㅇ, and thus pronounced as [나칙따]
You only know the half of the rule; the above rule applies only if the ...
- 7,536
5
votes
Accepted
Colon in pronunciation guide of 정리하다 [정ː니하다]
The ː symbol is the phonetic length mark indicating that the vowel in proceeding syllable is elongated.
For example listen to the difference between 눈 (eye) and 눈ː (snow). Notice how the 우 sound is ...
- 2,049
5
votes
Accepted
Why is the initial consonant of the second syllable of 현장 not tensed (된소리)?
I hope someone else could write a more definite answer, but in short, your idea that "the second syllable becomes 된소리 when the first ends with a consonant" is generally wrong.
The phenomenon of some ...
- 7,452
5
votes
Accepted
Why is 자꾸 pronounced "Chakku" but written as "Jakku"?
Pronunciation?
What you've found is right: unvoiced at the beginning of a word, otherwise voiced.
Then why “j” instead of “ch?” ― Romanization consistency for Koreans
And as to the title, that's ...
- 2,830
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