Talk:Korean phonology

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Contents 1 Is the consonant table official? 2 "으" (eu) as a high back vowel? 3 Initial ㅅ and ㅆ transcription 4 tone/pitch accent 5 Korean pronunciation key? 6 diphthong

[edit] Is the consonant table official?

I was wondering the source for the table of consonant pronunciations. I highly disagree with:
ㄱ - /k/
ㅂ - /p/
ㅈ - /ʨ/
ㄷ - /t/

In my opinion, it should be:
ㄱ - /g/
ㅂ - /b/
ㅈ - j sound like in english /dʒ/ (correct IPA symbol?)
ㄷ - /d/

I have experience with Korean and English since I was a kid and always disagree with the k,p,/ʨ,t pronunciations whenever I came across them in books and this article in particular. I recently conducted an experiment for fun by picking words that start with ㄱ,ㅂ,ㄷ, and ㅈ and asking native Korean speakers to choose what pronunciation sounds more accurate. For example, I would say "kalbi" and "galbi" for ㄱ and ask which was more accurate. Every person I questioned answered 100% to my consonant sounds system I personal think it is (g,b,j,d). Again, this wasn't done professionally, but it seemed obvious it wasn't the sounds from the current proposed IPA pronunciation table.

In my opinion, Korean Romanization systems have always been terrible and inaccurate, and those were suppose to have been devised by experts. Now I'm wondering if the IPA for Korean is just as bad.

Thoughts? KingKwon (talk) 07:57, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

My first thought is that since English /b/ /d/ /g/ /dʒ/ are themselves devoiced (except intervocalically) that your perception that Korean ㄱ is identical in voicing to English /g/ is correct. According to Hyunsoon Kim in "The place of articulation of the Korean plain affricate in intervocalic position: an articulatory and acoustic study" (Journal of the IPA 2001): "...Korean plain consonants, except for the plain fricative /s/, get voiced in an intervocalic position..." (p 252). This mimics the laryngeal properties of English consonants represented by <b> <d> <g> etc and not that of Mandarin <b> <d> <g>, which are still voiceless intervocalically. Does this help? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, but I'm a bit confused, I thought /b/ /d/ /g/ /dʒ/ were the voiced versions of /p/ /t/ /k/ "ch"? So how does a /g/ get made unvoiced?KingKwon 00:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[b] [d] [g] [dʒ] (square brackets) are the voiced versions of [p] [t] [k] [tʃ]. The issue here is that English /b/ is not really [b]. The IPA characters don't perfectly match for the respective English sounds. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused again. If the sounds are indeed the same for English and Korean, why does the IPA have [b] for English but not [b] for Korean in the initial position (and so on with g, d, dʒ). So I would expect "버스" and "bus" to both begin with a /b/ sound, but according to the chart, it would be a /p/ for Korean. If the b in English isn't a perfect match using IPA characters but still used, I would expect it to be used for Korean ㅂ as well. Thanks for your replies.
PS - Any recommendations on where I can look for more in depth information on Korean phonology? KingKwon 07:58, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd say the IPA is inconsistent. English is treated differently than most other languages. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I also generally agree. I have a friend whose family name is 조 and of course has always spelled it Cho, and eventually decided this doesn’t make sense and wants to spell it Jo. (P.S. I changed Aeusoes1’s angle brackets above to their html entities to prevent strange formatting down the page.) MJ (t • c) 15:44, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether you like it or not; Korean ㅂㄷㄱ are devoiced in initial and final position and voiced between voiced sounds; this means that it's simpler to assume the phonemes as being voiceless sounds. If you're unconvinced, keep listening; you will be able to notice slight aspiration in 가 sometimes. --Kjoonlee 17:10, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

It should matter if someone has a different opinion about something, otherwise things would never get revised. Even with a slight aspiration in 가, It still sounds more like ga than ka to me (although still not a perfect match for either letters). How exactly has the phonology of Korean been determined anyways? And is it possible the IPA's characters of /g/ and /k/ (etc) don't perfectly match for the respective Korean sounds? KingKwon 00:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

But opinions don't change observations. If you don't like the theory of gravity, does that stop apples falling from trees? No. If 가 sounds more like ga, then that means you're accustomed to the distinctive features of Korean. The phonology of Korean has always been described based on observations. /ɡ/ and /k/ are distinguished by voicing. 가 and 카 and 까 are all unvoiced in initial position, so they're all [k]. --Kjoonlee 00:33, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, then my observation was that with initial consonants aspiration makes a greater difference than voicing, in the ears of Korean speakers, not just foreigners like me, because (as you yourself said below) it is a distinctive feature in Korean. Your assertion that unvoiced = [k] (IPA) is not the same as saying that unvoiced = ‘k’ (everyday English writing). Some are taking you to mean the latter, which is the cause of this confusing (and IMO not very productive) dispute. As I said two weeks ago (below), the table is partly misinformative as it is. MJ (t • c) 14:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

That's not something that belongs in the consonants section of "Korean phonology", because that's Korean phonetics. If you account for the differences between phonology and phonetics, there's no error whatsoever. --Kjoonlee 16:53, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand the rest of your comments, though, but the parts I understand all back up my own claims. --Kjoonlee 17:06, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

To be fair, other phonology pages don't have phonological processes completely sectioned off (look at Spanish phonology and Russian phonology for instance). I think a few phonetic notes below the table might help readers who are similarly confused. I'll see if I can't move a few of those phonetic notes up and you guys tell me if It's weird. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:24, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Regarding Romanization, McC-R's focus was on phonetic representation (for foreigners), while RR's focus is more on phonemic representation (for Koreans). People who've lived in Korea for a long time, who have now returned to Sweden, are amused everytime people write down Busan instead of Pusan. ("In Korean P and B are the same," they say.) --Kjoonlee 17:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Regarding kalbi and galbi, this is because aspiration is a distinctive feature in Korean and voicing is not. In English, voicing is a distinctive feature whereas aspiration is not. Just try to say 달 탈 딸 (be careful to say 달 first) and ask English speakers if they heard [d]. --Kjoonlee 17:19, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, it would be nice to have some links for Korean phonology. Anyone have any useful links? KingKwon 00:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem with the consonant table is that it doesn’t distinguish initial, medial and final pronunciations, which obviously require different IPA transcriptions. That would require more space (perhaps even separate tables) but it’s necessary to really explain the phonology. As it is, the table offers as much misinformation as information. I haven’t time this week to make the change, but if no one else does by then I’ll have a go. MJ (t • c) 20:57, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

I have added a long note before the first table, attempting to explain what information is there and what is not. I am surprised that I, as a foreigner, should be the one to add this disclaimer; it seems to dare editors to add the missing info. In my opinion, presening comprehensive Korean consonant phonology in the layout of the IPA table is cumbersome; showing sound changes by Korean alphabetical order would make the info much easier to grasp. MJ (t • c) 15:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but that info did not belong there. "Pin" and "spin" are both use the same /p/ phoneme, but there's no need to mention [pʰ] in the consonant table at English phonology, since [pʰ] is just an allophone and aspiration is not a distinctive feature. Likewise, allophonic rules do not belong in a phoneme table for phonology. --Kjoonlee 17:17, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "으" (eu) as a high back vowel?

As far as I can remember, Korean linguistic books always represented eu by ɨ (high central unrounded), instead of ɯ (high back unrounded). The Korean version of this article (ko:한국어 음운론) uses ɨ. Can somebody verify this?

When I have time, I'll take a look at Korean books I have. Yongjik 06:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The Handbook of the IPA uses a high back vowel, IIRC. Maybe this is a case of free variation? --Kjoonlee 13:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a similar thing with Vietnamese. It probably has more to do with the preference of the author/linguist. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 13:56, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

There has been a very productive discussion in the Korean talk page ko:토론:한국어 음운론, and the conclusion is that different scholars use either ɨ or ɯ, probably because the range of the phoneme lies somewhere in between. When I have time (read: in six months if we're lucky -.-) I'll copy here those references that were brought up in the discussion there. Yongjik 08:48, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

There's a strong tendency cross-linguistically for rounded vowels to be further back than unrounded vowels. For instance, in French and German, /y/ and /ø/ aren't really the rounded versions of /i/ and /e/, they're further back than that (though not quite central either). This is not universal, but is common enough that it's influenced transcriptions of, say, Vietnamese. If the Korean vowel were central, you might expect it to be slightly front of central, since it's unrounded. Instead, it's well back of central, and rather close to /u/, at least in the vowel diagram we're using in this article. kwami (talk) 00:58, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Initial ㅅ and ㅆ transcription

In my exposure to Korean speech, initial ㅅ is aspirated [sʰ] while initial ㅆ is like a plain [s] or [sː], not tensed like the other double-consonants. I have always heard 살 pronounced [sʰal] and 쌀 as [sːal]. Whenever I pronounced such a ㅅ-word with an English s- my friends would say it sounded like ㅆ. Is this possibly peculiar to the Seoul dialect (which is the only one I’ve heard)? MJ (t • c) 06:15, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

It's very possible that the acoustic effect of tensing a fricative is different that tensing a plosive, even if the articulation is the same. I've not seen anything that suggests the articulation itself is different, though of course it could be. kwami (talk) 00:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

For lack of a better term, there's much more sibilance in ㅆ than in ㅅ. --Kjoonlee 05:14, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] tone/pitch accent

Is vowel length the only thing that's left of Korean tone/pitch accent? Is it still found dialectically? Should be covered in the article. kwami (talk) 22:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Tone/pitch is distinctive in Gyeongsang dialect IIRC. Gaji can mean eggplant, branch, or a conjugation of "gada" depending on high/low pitch. Details may vary depending on the variety of the Gyeongsang dialect. --Kjoonlee 17:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Korean pronunciation key?

It's been suggested that we agree on a system for indicating the pronunciation of Korean words that have Wikipedia articles, so that there isn't inconsistency for example in writing "ㅡ" as [ɯ] or [ɨ]. We could put up a key in Help space, and link to it from the transcriptions, the way we do now for Irish, Russian, French, Italian, Hebrew, etc. How does that sound?

Since we're writing primarily for an English-speaking audience, I personally think we should have a phonetic transcription that makes distinctions English speakers tend to hear, such as intervocalic voicing and [l] vs. [ɾ] (that is, things which are indicated in Wade-Guiles). However, I wouldn't want too narrow a transcription, which could just confuse people.

We would also need to decide on what to do with the round vowels which do not occur in all dialects. Perhaps Seoul pronunciation should be our guide in such cases.

It would also be nice to include vowel length, as we do in this article.

Any comments/suggestions/objections? kwami (talk) 01:10, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

What a good idea. Personally I'd say a "Seoul-dialect speaker trying his/her best to speak the standard dialect" sort of key with voice recordings would be fine. /me takes a look around him. --Kjoonlee 11:49, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

But I wouldn't bother with length; too much effort for too little gain. Maybe some examples for words like snow, eye, horse, speech would be nice, though. --Kjoonlee 13:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, take a look at Help:IPA chart for Korean. We can take up how to improve the key over there. I don't have any voice recordings to use, but it should be enough to give the reader a basic idea of what the IPA represents, and why there isn't a one-to-one correspondence with either hangul or RR. kwami (talk) 20:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] diphthong

"/ɰi/ ㅢ is the only true diphthong in the Korean language"

Can someone explain the reasoning behind this? Is it maybe /ɯi̯/ and this is the only falling diphthong? kwami (talk) 13:16, 4 June 2008 (UTC)