Hey Fej,
That is very interesting insight and here is the comment below!
fej4955 wrote:Hello everyone,
I have met on several interesting facts while studying Korean and wonder what of this all is true.
1. Why ,왜, is used very often. Today I listened to a podcast, where they said that koreans say "why" in situations when one normally in other languages (e.g. european languages) would use "what". Is there a reason to this? I have noticed several times, that in korean drama, they characters say 왜 (why), but the translation says "what".
-> this case is very interesting difference but it seems to be very much cultural. The same question would apply for English or even European for why 'what' instead of 'why'. Could also be very much linguistic aspect as well but I don't see any clear answer for that.
2. I hear often ㅁasㅂ. E.g. 미국 as 비국 or 삐국, that is "m" is proununced just like "b/p". I notice it also in difference forms of "what" e.g. 무슨. As hangul the initial consonant could be expected to proununced as "m" but often it sounds just like "b". Do I hear wrong or is the pronunciation of ㅁ andㅂvery close each other?
-> basically ㅁ,ㅂ,ㅍ are in the same category in Hangul and since there only difference exists on how you breathe out, there may seem similar. Also as you may know, the batchim rule could also be applied to affect the original sound into something else. For example, 이건 무슨 말이야?, since there is batchim before 무슨, even though it does not necessarily change but because of accent used in previous word, it implicitly affects the next word.
3.This might be a missunderstanding, but I think that ㅗ is often pronunced asㅓ, respectively is ㅛ asㅕ. This happens with the standard polite copula ㅛ. It is pronunced as [ㅕ], instead of [ㅛ]. Do you have anything correct in this point?
-> those are one of the common alphabets that Koreanclassers are going through. For ㅗ, you could think of O from Orange and ㅓ as U from Ugly. So when you pronounce those English words, you could tell the difference. Also for ㅛ and ㅕ, it is similar context that ㅛ is more like ㅗ sound but with Y sound while ㅕ is like ㅓ but again, with Y sound.
4. This one is my favourite, r/l in asian languages. The super fact about this it that asian people have often no idea are they pronuncing "r" or "l", they just hear no difference. This reminds me of the japanese man, who thought that his boss meant "suprise room" instead of "supplise room". Now, in Japanese there is no rule is the pronuncation "r" or "l", it is somewhere there between.
->that is absolutely true! To make it simple, Koreans do not basically use curled tongue. There may be similar sound but it is sure that we don't use the sound as 'curly' or 'wrong'. If you would like to hear some sounds that are between r and l, you could use our FREE Korean Dictionary to hear Korean words as 라면, 이름.
However, in Korean, I have heard about the rule, that if ㄹ is as inital consonant, the pronunciation is a soft "r" e.g. 사람 [sharam]. If ㄹ is again as final consonant, the pronunciation is with "l" e.g. 항굴 [hangul]. I asked this same question of korean native speaker, and her explenation just made me more confused, so I have basically no idea is there existing rules of how ㄹshould be pronunced.
-> that is one tricky part but for romanization rule of Korean, you are on the right track. For initial consonants, it is romanized as R though it is not exactly the same as how it would sound in English; on the other hand, last consonant as L. But again, R would not have any strong curled sound.
Thank you in advance.
I am not sure if I have given you any insights but those are very much blurred lines.
Please let us know if you have further questions,
We would be more than happy to hear from you!
Thank you
Madison
Team KoreanClass101.com
