Table Of ContentGlossika Guide to
KOREAN
Pronunciation
and Grammar
CONTENTS
3 About Glossika
4 Korean Pronunciation and Writing System
12 Korean Grammar
22 Extend Your Learning
29 Glossika Free Resources
About Glossika
Language learning requires a lot of planning, effort, training and practicing. Our vision
at Glossika is to minimize the amount of planning and effort required and increase your
exposure via native-speaker audio.
Since every language is unique and has its own set of difficulties, Glossika has developed
methods to sort this complexity in a way that is easy to learn and acquire for students like
yourself. We hope to level the playing field of difficulty between languages. By doing so
we’re able to present a wide variety of languages and make them accessible to any kind of
learner.
Korean may feel at first like an insurmountable challenge. We hope that Glossika becomes
one of the most important tools in your toolbox for acquiring speaking and listening
fluency.
To take full advantage of all that Glossika has to offer, sign up and start training your
Korean today!
Written by: Michael Campbell
ISBN: 978-986-9497-55-8
Copyright © 2017 Glossika. All rights reserved.
Any questions or feedback?
Contact us at [email protected]
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Quick Intro to Korean
1 Korean Pronunciation
and Writing System
The Korean alphabet and pronunciation system at first glance are not hard to learn. It
is when you need to start applying sound change rules that the system can get a bit
tricky.
We'll go over the basics here, but you may refer to the Korean Hangul infographic
(below) and the Korean Alphabet Game to learn the alphabet very well. In addition, the
Glossika IPA Channel and relevant image representing the sound of alphabet in your
mouth will be a great source for you to acquire the accurate pronunciation.
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There are two ways we can view an alphabet such as Korean:
It is phonemic in nature: it represents the underlying sounds associated with
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a word as it has descended to the present day through history. Such as the
English word "night" retaining {gh} in the middle of the word, but no longer
pronounced. If you just want to learn the letters, we recommend using the
Yale Romanization alphabet game. This is easiest and quickest to learn. If
you are a linguist who is writing papers about the Korean language, then
the Yale romanization is the international standard that you should use (note:
linguistics papers never write languages in their native scripts).
Applying a few sound rules to the spelling brings us to the modern real
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pronunciation that everybody uses in everyday speech, which linguists call
"phonetic." The difference can be shown in "to do" spelled "hapnita" and
pronounced "hamnida." You certainly should not pronounce the {p} as it's
written. Another example is "independent" spelled "toklip" and pronounced
"tongnip." If you play the Glossika Phonetic alphabet game, you will not only
learn all the letters but also their correct pronunciations as well. This is the
tool you should use to acquire the most accurate pronunciation.
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The Vowel System
Korean has the following vowels in IPA:
/a, ɛ, e, ʌ, o, u, ɯ, i/
The vowels are equivalent to a romanized version as follows:
{a, ae, e, ŏ, o, u, ŭ, i}
The vowels represented in Hangul as follows:
{ 아 , 애 , 에 , 어 , 오 , 우 , 으 , 이 }
(notice each vowel is preceded by an empty place holder circle)
These vowels can be preceded by both {y} and {w}:
Y: { 야 , 얘 , 예 , 여 , 요 , 유 }
W: { 와 , 왜 , 웨 , 워 }
Some vowels can be followed by {y}:
{ }
의 , 외 , 위
If you're learning the Yale romanization, then technically and are and followed
애 에 아 어
by {y} resulting in: ay and ey, respectively.
이
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The Consonant System
Korean does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants as we do in
English. Instead they are in allophonic variation with each other. Allophonic variation
means that a letter is pronounced in one way (unvoiced) under a certain condition and
another way (voiced) in another condition. An example of this is the English letter {t}: in
"top" it is aspirated, in "stop" it is unaspirated, in "better" it is flapped, and in "gotten" it is a
glottal stop.
Korean [r, l] are also in allophonic variation. You may have noticed that Koreans don't
always get these sounds right when speaking English, but this is because they are
considered the same sound in Korean, and tightly influenced by the conditions in which
they manifest. In English, the conditions are different, and the sounds can be isolated as
separate sounds which is why it can be difficult for a Korean speaker. In fact, [r, l] have
another allophone: [n] which you will learn to apply when practicing the Korean phonetic
game at Glossika.
The pronunciation of [s, c] have allophonic variation before {i, y} vowels and sound closer
to English {sh, ch}.
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The fact that Korean doesn't distinguish between unvoiced and voiced is not what trips
learners up, it's the fact that there are three different kinds of unvoiced consonants. Let's
take a look:
{k }:
ㄱ
a single letter can be voiced between vowels, but is usually unvoiced at the beginning
and end of words. The letter is only slightly aspirated, like a very weak English {k}.
{kk }:
ㄲ
the double letter is tense and sounds just like our English unaspirated {k} in "sky."
{kh }:
ㅋ
the strong letter is strongly aspirated, even more than our English {k}, as in "kite."
{h }:
ㅎ
If the letter {h } precedes the single letter, it will turn it into a strong aspirated letter.
ㅎ
The same rules apply to these letters:
{p, t, k, c }- { ㅂ, ㄷ, ㄱ, ㅈ}
{pp, tt, kk, cc }- { ㅃ, ㄸ, ㄲ, ㅉ}
{ph, th, kh, ch}- { ㅍ, ㅌ, ㅋ, ㅊ}
The last group of letters have a complex relationship when they
{l ㄹ, m ㅁ, n ㄴ, ng ㅇ}
come in contact with each other. You'll learn these patterns from practicing the phonetic
alphabet on the Glossika website.
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