1.3 Liaison — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read aloud correctly any word in which a bottom letter is followed by a vowel, because you can say where the consonant goes. Hold the spelling of a word and the sound of a word apart in your head, and say why Korean spelling keeps the first rather than the second. Work through twenty words and say, for each, which consonant moved and what came out. Say which bottom letters do not move, and what a two-letter cluster does. Prerequisites : 0.5, which gives you the bottom letters and the seven sounds they reduce to when nothing follows them. That lesson is the other half of this one: it tells you what a bottom letter sounds like when it stays, and this one tells you what happens when it leaves. The silent circle comes from 0.2 Hangul . Here is the first place where Korean spelling stops telling you the sound directly, and it is the most frequent such place in the language. The word for the Korean language is written with three blocks and sounds like three different blocks. Nothing is irregular about it; a single rule, with almost no exceptions, connects the two. But you have to learn to carry both shapes of a word at once, the written one and the spoken one, and beginners who do not usually end up reading Korean the way a computer with no rules would read it, one block at a time, which no Korean speaker does. The rule A syllable block that has no consonant of its own at the front is written with the silent circle as a placeholder. That circle marks an empty slot. When the block before it ends in a bottom letter, the bottom letter moves into that empty slot and is pronounced there, as the onset of the following block. The spelling does not change; only the sound does. Take the word for the Korean language, written as three blocks: the first ends in a bottom letter, the second ends in a bottom letter, and the third begins with the silent circle. The bottom letter of the second block moves into the third, and what you hear is 한국어 pronounced as [ 한구거 ]. The second bottom letter has left its block, so the second block now ends in a vowel, and the third block now begins with a consonant. Three blocks in, three blocks out, with the consonants shifted one place to the right. The same thing happens across a word boundary, between a noun and the particle that follows it, which is where you will meet it constantly. A noun ending in a consonant plus a particle beginning with a vowel gives one continuous run of sound with the consonant in the middle of it. That is why Korean read aloud does not have the block-by-block rhythm that the writing suggests. It is worth being exact about the condition, because a rule with a clear condition is easier than a list. The bottom letter moves when, and only when, the next block begins with the silent circle, which is to say when the next sound is a vowel. If the next block begins with any real consonant, nothing moves and the bottom letter stays where it is, reduced to one of the seven sounds of lesson 0.5. There is no third case at this stage. Twenty words Read each word aloud before you look at the pronunciation beside it, then check. The meaning is there so that you know what you are saying. The square brackets are the convention used throughout this course for the actual sound of a word as against its spelling. Word Meaning What moved 한국어 ko [ 한구거 ] the Korean language the bottom letter of the second block 있어요 ko [ 이써요 ] there is; I have (polite present of 있다 ) a doubled bottom letter, which moves whole 음악 ko [ 으막 ] music a nasal bottom letter 먹어요 ko [ 머거요 ] I eat; eats (polite present of 먹다 , to eat) a plain stop, which is voiced in its new place 읽어요 ko [ 일거요 ] I read; reads (polite present of 읽다 , to read) the second half of a two-letter cluster 앉아요 ko [ 안자요 ] I sit; sits (polite present of 앉다 , to sit) the second half of a two-letter cluster 옷이 ko [ 오시 ] clothes, with the subject particle 이 a hiss, which is a stop when it stays and a hiss when it moves 꽃이 ko [ 꼬치 ] a flower, with the subject particle 이 an aspirated letter, which keeps its puff in the new place 밥을 ko [ 바블 ] rice; a meal, with the object particle 을 a plain stop at the lips 집에 ko [ 지베 ] at home; to the house ( 집 house + 에 ) a plain stop at the lips, before a particle 이름은 ko [ 이르믄 ] the name, with the topic particle 은 (as for the name) a nasal, before a particle 책을 ko [ 채글 ] a book, with the object particle 을 a plain stop at the soft palate 일본어 ko [ 일보너 ] the Japanese language a nasal, inside a word of three blocks 신문을 ko [ 신무늘 ] a newspaper, with the object particle 을 a nasal; the first bottom letter does not move 물이 ko [ 무리 ] water, with the subject particle 이 the liquid letter, which becomes a tap once it moves 발음 ko [ 바름 ] pronunciation the same, inside a single word 단어 ko [ 다너 ] a word a nasal at the teeth ridge 맛있어요 ko [ 마시써요 ] it's delicious (polite present of 맛있다 ) two movements, one after the other 사람이 ko [ 사라미 ] a person, with the subject particle 이 a nasal at the lips, before a particle 얼음 ko [ 어름 ] ice the liquid letter, which becomes a tap Three of these repay a second look. In the fourth and twelfth the letter that moves is a plain stop, and once it sits between two vowels it is voiced, by the rule of lesson 1.1, so an English ear hears a g or a b where the spelling has the plain letter. In the fifteenth and the twentieth the letter that moves is the liquid of lesson 1.2, and moving changes what it is: held at the end of its own block, a single tap once it stands between vowels. And in the seventh a letter that would have been a stop where it was written comes out as a hiss once it has moved, because the reduction to seven sounds only applies to a letter that stays. Spelling and sound are two different things You could ask why Korean does not simply write what it says. The writing system is young enough, and regular enough, that it could have. The answer is that it chooses to keep the shape of the word visible instead. Consider the word for clothes. Written