0.4 Complex Vowels and Double Consonants — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the eleven compound vowels ㅐ , ㅒ , ㅔ , ㅖ , ㅘ , ㅙ , ㅚ , ㅝ , ㅞ , ㅟ , ㅢ . Take any of them apart into the basic vowels it is built from. Read the five doubled consonants ㄲ , ㄸ , ㅃ , ㅆ , ㅉ , and say what makes them a third series rather than a loud version of the first. Say honestly which letters are now written apart but said alike, and which words that affects. Give the three different values of ㅢ and say what decides between them. Prerequisites : 0.3, which gives you the fourteen basic consonants and the three-way contrast of breath that the doubled letters complete. You also need the ten basic vowels of 0.2 Hangul , because every compound vowel here is two of them written together. This lesson finishes the alphabet. Nothing new is invented in it: the eleven compound vowels are pairs of vowels you already have, and the five doubled consonants are letters you already have, written twice. What is new is a problem. Up to now every letter has had one sound and every sound one letter, and from here that stops being quite true. Two of the letters below are now said the same way by almost every speaker, and the course will say so rather than pretend otherwise. The letters Take the four simplest compounds first. Add a vertical stroke — which is to say, add ㅣ — to the right of a tall vowel, and you get a vowel made further forward in the mouth. Built from Result The vowel of ㅏ plus ㅣ ㅐ b e d ㅓ plus ㅣ ㅔ b e d, for most speakers the same ㅑ plus ㅣ ㅒ ye s ㅕ plus ㅣ ㅖ ye s, for most speakers the same Then the seven that begin with a rounding of the lips. A wide vowel followed by a tall one gives a vowel with a w at the front of it, and the wide vowel decides which kind of w . Built from Result Roughly ㅗ plus ㅏ ㅘ wa as in wander ㅗ plus ㅐ ㅙ we as in wet ㅗ plus ㅣ ㅚ we as in wet , for most speakers ㅜ plus ㅓ ㅝ wo as in won ㅜ plus ㅔ ㅞ we as in wet , again ㅜ plus ㅣ ㅟ wi as in wit ㅡ plus ㅣ ㅢ see below, it has three values Ten basic vowels plus these eleven is twenty-one vowel letters, and that is all of them. The layout inside a block follows the same rule as before, because a compound vowel that contains a wide part is itself wide: ㅘ is written with its ㅗ under the onset and its ㅏ to the right of both, so the block has three parts instead of two. Nothing about the reading order changes. The five doubled consonants Now the consonants. Five of the plain letters can be written twice, and the doubled letter is a different consonant, not an emphatic version of the single one. Lesson 0.3 set up a row of two, plain and aspirated; the doubled letters are the third member, called tense. Plain Aspirated Tense ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ ㄷ ㅌ ㄸ ㅂ ㅍ ㅃ ㅈ ㅊ ㅉ ㅅ none ㅆ The hiss letter has no aspirated partner, so its row has two members rather than three. The names of the doubled letters are the names from lesson 0.3 with a word meaning "paired" in front, so ㄲ is 쌍기역 and ㅆ is 쌍시옷 . In dictionary order each doubled letter follows its single one, which gives ㄱ , ㄲ , ㄴ , ㄷ , ㄸ , ㄹ and so on. Here are three pairs that differ in nothing but the plain against the tense letter. Say each pair aloud. Lesson 1.1 drills the full three-way contrast; the point today is only that the difference carries meaning. Plain Tense The letter that changes 사다 to buy 싸다 to be cheap ㅅ against ㅆ 자다 to sleep 짜다 to be salty ㅈ against ㅉ 개 dog 깨 sesame ㄱ against ㄲ Where spelling and sound come apart This is the first honest qualification the course has to make, and it is better made now than discovered later. For most speakers of standard Korean today, ㅐ and ㅔ are the same vowel. They were different once, and the spelling still keeps them apart everywhere, but the two have merged in speech across almost the whole peninsula. The same has happened to ㅒ and ㅖ , and the three letters of the we kind have collapsed into one sound as well. Written differently Said alike What speakers do about it ㅐ and ㅔ one vowel, close to bed spell the word out letter by letter when it matters ㅒ and ㅖ one vowel with a y-glide ㅒ is rare, so the question seldom arises ㅙ , ㅚ , ㅞ one vowel, close to wet learn which spelling each word takes The practical effect is that Korean has pairs of words that sound identical and are spelled differently: 개 is a dog and 게 is a crab, and no pronunciation separates them. Korean deals with this the way English deals with their and there , by context, and by spelling the word out when context is not enough. What it means for you is simply this: you cannot always write a Korean word from having heard it. You have to learn the spelling. That is the one respect in which Korean is like English, and it is worth knowing about on the day you meet the letters rather than six months later. One word deserves separate mention because the mismatch in it is systematic rather than historical. The letter ㅢ has three values, and position decides which. Where it appears Said as Example first syllable of a word as written, gliding from one vowel to the other 의사 a doctor any later syllable commonly just ㅣ 회의 a meeting as the possessive particle commonly ㅔ 나의 my Read these corpus sentences aloud and find the compound vowels and doubled consonants in them. Each was chosen for a letter of this lesson. Korean English 개가 있어요? [1] Do you have a dog? 그는 의사예요. [2] He's a doctor. 그녀는 예뻐요. [3] She is beautiful. 너무 비싸요. [4] It's too expensive. 이건 쉬워요. [5] This is easy. How This Differs from English English has two series of stops and Korean has three. The tense consonants are the hardest part of the Korean sound system for an English speaker, because there is nothing in English to map them onto. They are not louder than the plain letters, and they are not the plain letters said with more force; they are made by tightening the throat before releasing, so that the release is short, sharp and completely without breath. A sheet of paper held loosely in front of your lips will move a great deal for an aspirated letter, a little for a plain one, and not at all for a tense o