...Korean! Week One: Part Three - Pronunciation

안녕하세요!

There are a few rules that determine how a letter in a word sounds, depending on its location relative to other letters in a word. I'll go over the main points one-by-one below. In the following examples, the symbol > means the preceding sound transforms into the following sound. These rules all stem from the rules delineated in Integrated Korean, but I've taken the liberty to both simplify and use more specific terminology to explain these phenomena.

This post is EXTREMELY DENSE. 

For those who are new to language learning, learning pronunciation will come with time and practice. I would recommend that you skip over this post.

There are 5 major rules of pronunciation, which are as follows:

1. Rule of resyllabification 
2. Rule of syllable-final closure 
3. Rule of assimilation* 
4. Rule of tensification 
5. Rule of dissimilation 

*The rule of assimilation can be further split into smaller sub-categories, which will be explained below.

Please be aware that this section may be considered extremely dense with information that may be difficult to comprehend at first. If you feel like you don't want to be bothered with how Korean actually sounds, you can go ahead and skip over this lesson. However, I think it is necessary to introduce these rules to any learner so he/she can understand how to pronounce Korean words!

Take note that ALL rules of pronunciation are cumulative, meaning that if more than one rule may apply, they all are preserved in pronunciation. Also notice that despite the pronunciation change as a result of any of these processes described, the spelling remains unchanged.

1. Rule of resyllabification

In Korean, when a consonant at the end of a syllable is followed by an open vowel without pause, that consonant sound carries over to the following syllable and becomes the initial consonant in pronunciation. It does not matter if the following syllable is part of a suffix or another word. For example, in 한글은 (hangeul-eun) , the final consonant of the second syllable precedes a bare vowel, and, as a result of resyllabification, is pronounced ?한그른.*

*The ? here represents an atypical variant of the example. In this case, it represents the actual phonemic representation of the pronunciation, meaning how it actually sounds.

2. Rule of syllable-final closure

At the end of a word or before another consonant, all Korean consonants are pronounced without releasing air. Therefore, all aspirated and tense consonants, when found at the end of a word or when followed by another consonant, transform into their plain alternatives in pronunciation. In addition, ㅊ,ㅈ,ㅆ, and ㅅ transform into ㄷ.

For example: 꽃 (kkoch), the word for "flower," in 꽃은 "as for flowers" is pronounced 

?꼬츤/kko.ch'eun/, while 꽃도 (kkoch-to) "flower too" is pronounced like ?꼳또 /kkot.tto/. 꽃, when pronounced separately, is also pronounced as 꼳/kkot/. *

This can be summarized as follows:

• ㅍ,ㅃ > ㅂ 
• ㅌ,ㄸ,ㅅ,ㅆ,ㅈ,ㅊ > ㄷ 
• ㄲ,ㅋ > ㄱ 

3. Rule of assimilation

Assimilation is when one sound changes to become more like another because it is influenced by that sound to make pronunciation easier. Korean has 4 types of assimilation: voice assimilation, place assimilation, manner assimilation, and aspiration:

a. Voice assimilation

is when a voiceless consonant transforms into its voiced counterpart. Voicing refers to whether or not the vocal cords vibrate when pronouncing a sound. A voiced sound is when the cords vibrate, and the cords do not vibrate for a voiceless sound. /p, k, t/ are all voiceless sound, and /b, g, d/ are all voiced. All nasal and liquid sounds are also voiced: /n, l, r/. 

In Korean, voiceless consonants /p, t, k/ are default. However, all voiceless consonants become voiced when found in between two vowels or after a voiced consonant /l, n, r/:

• /p, k, t/ > /b, g, d/ between V, N, and/or L 

*V=vowel, N=nasal consonant, L=liquid consonant

b. Place assimilation

refers to the changing of sounds depending on how the air that is produced becomes restricted upon release. Without going into technical linguistic terminology, I'll only define place assimilation by how it appears in Korean: palatalization, labialization, and velarization.*

*Labialization and velarization are only evident in very casual speech. They are explained here in order to account for natural speech patterns that the reader may come across in real-life situations or in further studies. 

Palatalization refers to the change of sound resulting in a palatal consonant, ㅈ or ㅊ. This is only found when the consonants ㄷ or ㅌ are followed by the vowel (i) or the semivowel (y), regardless if the letter (h) precedes the vowel:

• ㄷ, ㅌ > ㅈ, ㅊ before (h)i or (h)y- 

Labialization is when the consonants are influenced by the pronunciation of one consonant produced by partial closing of the lips, or labial consonant. The labial consonants are /p/ and /b/:

• ㄷ > ㅂ before ㅂor ㅃ 

Velarization is when a velar consonant (when the tongue is touching the very back of the mouth) influences the pronunciation of another consonant. The velars are /k/ and /g/:

• ㄷ > ㄱ before ㄱor ㄲ 

c. Manner assimilation

indicates a change in the posture of the speech organs (lips, tongue, palate) due to another neighboring sound. There are two types of manner assimilation in Korean: nasalization and liquidization.

Nasalization refers to the change in sound of a consonant when influenced by a nasal consonant /m, n, ng/: 

• ㅂ, ㅍ > ㅁbefore N 
• ㄷ, ㅌ, ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅈ, ㅊ, ㅎ > ㄴ before N 
• ㄱ, ㅋ, ㄲ > ㅇ before N 

Liquidization is when a consonant becomes a liquid consonant when preceded by another liquid. This only happens to the consonant (n) when found before (l):

• ㄴ > ㄹ before another ㄹ

d. Aspiration

refers to the transformation of a plain plosive into its aspirated counterpart. This only occurs in Korean when ㅎ either precedes or follows a plain consonant.

• ㅎ + C > C' 
• C + ㅎ > C' 

4. Rule of Tensification

This rule involves the formation of a tense plosive from a plain plosive or fricative when preceded by another plain plosive or fricative. The plosives are ㅂ, ㄱ, and ㄷand the fricative consonant is ㅅ, whose tense counterparts are ㅃ, ㄲ, and ㄸ.

• P1 or F1 + P2 or F2 > P1P'2, P1F'2, F1P'2, or F1F'2* 

*1 represents the first consonant and 2 represents the following one. ' represents the aspirated counterpart of the same consonant. P represents a plosive consonant, and F represents a fricative.

5. Rule of Dissimilation (Double consonant reduction)

Dissimilation is exactly the opposite of assimilation so as to simplify pronunciation. This is where one sound is changed to a sound that is not similar to its nearby, similar sound. This can only be seen in Korean when the second of two consonants in a single cluster in a syllable coda is deleted, that is, becomes silent. According to the textbook, it is difficult to determine which of the consonants becomes silent, but as a general rule, it is the second that becomes silent. This is similar to the process of resyllabification, when a consonant carries over to another syllable that does not have a consonant onset, but differs when a consonant cluster precedes another syllable that does have a beginning consonant. In the latter circumstance, one of the 2 consonants in the first syllable is deleted so that there is no longer a cluster of 3 consonants, which is impossible in Korean.




So these are all the rules of pronunciation for Korean. I feel like adding examples of each of these rules would be greatly beneficial, but I'm in the process of finding real audio samples of these processes so that you can actually hear the differences in pronunciation, instead of just imagining how they sound.


This post will conclude my first week of learning Korean. In the next few days I will upload some exercises, as well as some practice quizzes to help with drilling the information provided over these last 3 posts. I've decided also to provide a brief summary of any vocabulary and grammar learned in the past week's lessons. Since we haven't covered any actual grammar or vocabulary, I will instead give a short list of useful expressions as provided in the Integrated Korean textbook.