Linguistic characteristics

Korean language

Written by

Samuel E. Martin

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

Vowels

The vowel nucleus consists of a simple vowel, which may be preceded by y or w. The McCune-Reischauer romanization puts a breve (˘) over the letters u and o to distinguish the originally unrounded vowels [ɨ] and [ə] (= Seoul [ɔ]) from their rounded counterparts [u] and [o]. (Unrounded vowels are said with a tight smile; rounded vowels with pursed lips.) The Yale romanization uses the letter u for the unrounded [ɨ] and writes [u] as wu but encourages the omission of the w after p, ph (= p’), pp, m, and y, where the rounding has become nondistinctive in modern Korean. The front vowels transcribed as e = [e], and ae = [ε] or [æ] were originally diphthongs, as shown by the complex Hangul symbols reflected in the ey and ay of the Yale romanization. The vowel ae is no longer kept distinct from e in southern Korea and the distinction is virtually lost in modern Seoul, though it is maintained in the spellings. Another old diphthong, originally [oy], is transcribed oe (Yale oy) and sometimes pronounced as a front rounded vowel [ö], though it commonly sounds the same as the less common diphthong we, which is often simplified to just e; the surname Ch’oe may be said as if spelled Ch’we or Ch’e. The old diphthong [uy] became modern wi [wi] and is so pronounced by most speakers, but some people use a front rounded vowel [ü]. The old diphthong ŭi [ɨy], into which ăe [əy] merged, was largely replaced by [ɨ] (initially) or [i], but it is maintained in spelling certain words of Chinese origin such as ŭiŭi [ɨ:i] ‘meaning’ and in writing the particle -ŭi [e] ‘of’ (but not the homonymous particle -e ‘to’ or ‘in’). The older version as a diphthong has regained popularity in modern Seoul in words such as ŭija ‘chair’ (said as three syllables), probably as a result of “reading” pronunciations.

Consonants

When they are initial, the simple stops p, t, and k are pronounced much as in English (pie, tie, kite), with light aspiration. When final, they are cut off with no release, as in one way of saying English “Up! Out! Back!”. The affricate ch occurs in the word chip ‘house,’ which is pronounced with a sound intermediate between English chip and cheap; some speakers, especially before the back vowels, pronounce the affricate as a nonpalatalized [ts], and that is thought to have been its 15th-century pronunciation. Between voiced sounds (which include the vowels and y, w, m, n, ng, l, and r), the stops acquire voicing, and that feature is noted in the McCune-Reischauer romanization (but not in the Hangul spelling or the Yale romanization): ip ‘mouth’ but ib-e ‘in the mouth,’ mat ‘firstborn’ but mad-adŭl ‘eldest son,’ ak ‘evil’ but ag-in ‘evil person.’ Final -p sometimes represents a basic p’ (ap ‘front’ but ap’-e ‘in front’) or ps [pss] (kap ‘price’ but kaps-ŭl ‘the price [as object]’). A final t sometimes represents a basic t’ (mit ‘bottom’ but mit’-e ‘at the bottom’), j (nat ‘daytime’ but naj-e ‘in the daytime’), or ch’ (kkot ‘flower’ but kkoch’-ida ‘it’s a flower’); more often, however, a final t represents a basic s (ot ‘garment’ but os-ŭl ‘the garment [as object]’). Some speakers regularize the basic forms of nouns (but not verb stems) so that for them the nonfinal t always represents basic s; they say pas-ey for the standard pat’-ey ‘in the field.’ The single liquid phoneme has two predictable pronunciations: a clear (and sometimes palatalized) lateral [l] when it is at the end of a syllable or doubled [-l:l-], otherwise (and also before h) the flap [r]. The McCune-Reischauer transcription writes l or r in accordance with the pronunciation, which is ignored by the Hangul spelling and the Yale romanization: il ‘one’ but ir-wŏn ‘one Wŏn,’ nal ‘day’ and nal-lo ‘by the day’ but nar-e ‘on the day.’ There are problems involving initial r and n that are reflected in newspaper references to “President Roh (pronounced No).” The Korean language borrowed some Chinese words beginning with a liquid ([l] in Chinese), and Koreans tried to pronounce them with an r, but they were generally successful only when the element was not initial in a word; when the liquid was initial they used an n instead. The second syllable of toro ‘street’ is the same element as the first syllable of nosang ‘on the street’ (which is spelled with an n- in South Korea but with an r- in North Korea). There is an added complication: in the south ny- and ni- (whether from original n- or from r-) dropped the nasal, and that is when the common surname borrowed from Chinese Lĭ became Yi. The name is still pronounced [ni] in parts of North Korea, though the reading pronunciation [ri] has spread in P’yŏngyang since 1945. In modern times, loanwords from English, Japanese, and Russian have brought in an initial [r], and that is usually pronounced as a flap.

Assimilations

The spoken syllables are fairly simple in structure. Each ends either in a vowel or in one of the voiced consonants p, t, k, m, n, ng, or l. When two syllables are put together, various changes may take place where they join. When a syllable that ends in a stop is followed by one that begins with a nasal, the stop assimilates: chip ‘house’ + -man ‘only’ sounds just like chim ‘burden’ + -man [čimman], and kung-min can mean either ‘the people of the nation’ (when the first syllable is kuk- ‘nation’) or ‘the poor people’ (when the first syllable is kung- ‘poor’). Hangul spelling distinguishes such pairs by writing the basic forms. Before a velar (k, k’, kk), the dental n is usually pronounced like the velar ng so that kan’go ‘hardship’ sounds like kanggo ‘stable,’ but that assimilation is ignored in both the spelling and the transcriptions. Both -n + l- and -l + n- are pronounced like -l + l-, so for the sound [-l:l-] one must know what is in the word to decide which of the three Hangul spellings to use.

Aspirated and reinforced consonants

English makes a two-way distinction of voiceless and voiced stops (pip, bib; tat, dad; kick, gig). In Korean, voicing is automatic, so that [p] and [b] form a single phoneme and are written with the same Hangul letter. Korean distinguishes two other kinds of obstruents (stops, or fricatives): heavily aspirated p’, t’, k’, and ch’ and reinforced (tense) pp, tt, kk, and tch. The standard language also has a tense sibilant ss in contrast with the lax (and somewhat aspirated) s, but many speakers maintain this distinction only at the beginning of a word or ignore it entirely, despite the spelling. Both kinds of s are palatalized before i or y, and the lax s sounds like English sh, so that the Silla kingdom is sometimes referred to as the Shilla kingdom. (The Yale transcription for this name, Sinla, shows the Hangul spelling.) The reinforced consonants, now written as geminates (duplicate letters), probably became distinctive through the reduction of clusters, such as Middle Korean st, pst, and pt, and in many words the heavily aspirated consonants seem to go back to earlier clusters with h or k. The clusters, in turn, were reduced from disyllabic strings by syncope (omitting the vowel). The simple aspirate h is often murmured or dropped between voiced sounds: si(h)ŏm ‘test,’ annyŏng (h)ase-yo ‘How are you?’ That accounts for the [r] in words like sir(h)ŏm ‘experiment.’ Before i the velar nasal is often reduced to no more than nasality: annyŏng (h)i kase-yo ‘Good-bye to you who are leaving’ is usually pronounced [annyɔĩgas].

Reinforcement

When p, t, k, ch, or s is preceded by a stop, it is automatically pronounced as reinforced (tense), but that sound feature is ignored both in the Hangul spellings and in the transcriptions: ip-to ‘the mouth too’ = /iptto/, ot-kwa ‘with the garment’ = /o(t)kkwa/, kuk-poda ‘than the soup’ = /kukppoda/, hakcha ‘scholar’ = /haktcha/, iksal ‘joke’ = /ikssal/. After the adnominal ending -(ŭ)l there is reinforcement unless a pause is inserted: pol kot ‘the place to look’ sounds just like pol kkot ‘the flower to look at,’ but they are spelled and transcribed differently. Other cases of reinforcement are less predictable and are variously treated or neglected in spellings and transcriptions. In some cases the reinforcement goes back to the Middle Korean particle s ‘of.’

Liaison

When a Korean syllable that begins with a vowel is added to a syllable that ends in a consonant, that coda moves over to fill the empty onset slot of the second syllable: chip ‘house’ + -e ‘to’ is romanized chib-e but pronounced /či-be/, pap ‘rice/meal’ + -ŭl (direct object) is spelled pab-ŭl but said as /pa-bŭl/, and tong-an ‘interval’ is heard as /to-ŋan/.