1.4 Nasalisation and Lateralisation — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read aloud any word in which a stop at the end of a block is followed by a nasal, because you know which nasal it turns into. Read aloud the sequences that produce a long liquid, and say which of the two letters changed. State the three rules of this lesson in one table, each with its condition and its output. Work out the sound of an unfamiliar written word rather than guessing at it, using this lesson together with the previous one. Prerequisites : 1.3, which showed you the first rule that separates a Korean word's spelling from its sound, and gave you the convention of square brackets for the sound. You also need the seven closing sounds from 0.5 Hangul and the liquid letter from 1.2 Sounds , because both rules here are about what happens when those two meet a neighbour. Liaison moved a consonant without changing it. The rules in this lesson change the consonant itself, and they are why a beginner who knows only liaison still mispronounces a great many ordinary words. The mechanism operates in every language: a consonant next to another consonant takes on some property of its neighbour, because that is less work for the mouth. What makes Korean unusual is how thoroughly the writing ignores it. English at least writes impossible with an m; Korean would write it with an n and expect you to know. The rule There are three rules, and they share a single shape: a consonant at the end of one block and a consonant at the start of the next block cannot be produced in that order without effort, so one of them gives way. Which one gives way, and what it becomes, depends on the pair. Learn them as three facts about pairs, not as three lists of words. A stop before a nasal becomes a nasal Recall the seven closing sounds. Three of them are stops: one made at the soft palate, one at the teeth ridge, one at the lips. Each of those three has a nasal partner made in exactly the same place, and the partner is what you say when the next block begins with a nasal, that is, with ㄴ or ㅁ . Closing sound Becomes Where it is made ㄱ ㅇ the soft palate ㄷ ㄴ the teeth ridge ㅂ ㅁ the lips Nothing moves; the letter stays in its own block and comes out as the nasal of the same place. Your tongue and lips do not change position at all between the written letter and the spoken one. What changes is the soft palate at the back of your mouth, which drops and lets the air out through the nose instead of blocking it. That is why the rule costs nothing to produce once you know it is there. The condition must be stated in terms of the closing sound and not the written letter, because the reduction to seven comes first. A block written with ㅅ , ㅆ , ㅈ , ㅊ or ㅌ at the bottom closes on the sound of ㄷ , so all five turn into ㄴ before a nasal, not into anything resembling their own letter. A block written with ㅍ closes on the sound of ㅂ and gives ㅁ . The clearest single example is the word for the Korean language in its everyday spoken form. It is written with three blocks, the second of which ends in ㄱ , and the third begins with ㅁ . So 한국말 is said as [ 한궁말 ], with the nasal at the soft palate in the middle. The same thing happens over a space, between two separate words spoken in one breath: the word for cooked rice followed by the verb for eating gives [ 밤 ] for the first word, not [ 밥 ]. This is also the rule behind a word form you will hear constantly. The formal polite ending of the language is written 입니다 and said [ 임니다 ]. This course keeps you in the polite 요 style for the whole of the first phase and will not ask you to produce that ending; it appears here only because it is the most frequent illustration of the rule in the language. The expression of thanks built on it, 감사합니다 , is said [ 감사함니다 ] for the same reason. The liquid letter after a nasal becomes a nasal The second rule runs the other way: the first consonant stays as it is and the second one changes. When a block ends in one of the two nasals ㅁ or ㅇ and the next block begins with the liquid letter ㄹ , the liquid letter is said as ㄴ . A nasal followed directly by a liquid is the awkward sequence here, and Korean resolves it by making the second sound nasal too. So the word for tidying up, 정리 , is said [ 정니 ], and the word for a kind or a type, 종류 , is said [ 종뉴 ]. The title of a head of state, 대통령 , is said [ 대통녕 ]. None of these is an exception or a special reading; every word in the language behaves this way. A longer version of the rule combines it with the first one. If the block before the liquid letter ends in a stop rather than a nasal, the liquid still becomes ㄴ , and that new ㄴ then triggers the first rule on the stop in front of it. So 협력 , cooperation, gives ㄹ as ㄴ and then ㅂ as ㅁ : [ 혐녁 ]. Apply one rule, then look again. A nasal next to the liquid letter becomes the liquid letter The third rule looks like the opposite of the second, and the difference between them is worth being exact about, because it is the one place in this lesson where a learner can go badly wrong. Rule two applied to ㅁ and ㅇ . Rule three applies to ㄴ . When ㄴ and ㄹ stand next to each other, in either order, both come out as ㄹ , giving the long doubled liquid you met in lesson 1.2. So the name of the mountain on the southern island, 한라산 , is said [ 할라산 ]; the word for getting in touch with somebody, 연락 , is said [ 열락 ]; and the name of the old kingdom, 신라 , is said [ 실라 ]. In the other order, a block ending in ㄹ followed by a block beginning with ㄴ gives the same result: the word for one year, written 일 년 , is said [ 일련 ]. The way to keep rules two and three apart is to ask which nasal is involved. If it is ㄴ , the two sounds meet in the middle of the mouth at the same place, and the liquid wins. If it is ㅁ or ㅇ , they are made in different places, and the nasal wins. Rule three has a limited set of exceptions, and it is honest to name them now rather than let you find them later. In a few Sino-Korean words where a single-syllable element beginning with