Teach Yourself Korean - can anyone check the spelling?

[zhenhui]

Does anyone know how to pronounce 얻다?

Is it od-da? ot-da? o-da?

It means

1. 得 [dé]

2. 得到 [dé dào]

3. 获得 [huò dé]

4. 取得 [qǔ dé]

Thanks!

[Ian_Lee]

It is pronounced as ot-da.

[atitarev]

bhchao

I made a mistake. Just asked my co-worker, and she said ㄱ in most cases (about 70% of the time) is pronounced with a "g".

So the correct pronunciation of 갈비 is "galbi", not "kalbi". 불고기 is pronounced "bul-go-gi".

And the correct pronunciation of the surname 김 in Korean is "Gim".

You ask another person and he will give the opposite. It's all about how you hear those sounds and what your background and exposure is.

ㄱ at the beginning of the word is similar to Chinese "g" (gege) - unaspirated and somewhat voiced. If you say "k" without any aspiration it will be correct too.

Between vowels the same letter will be pronounced half voiced (a weaker g), again, if you pronounce like "k" unaspirated you won't be too wrong. Korean romanisation systems are a bad mixture of Pinyin and Wade - where zhong can be transliterated as ZHONG or CHUNG, none of them is 100% accurate.

A Chinese person will say "bai" and you will say he said "pai" if your ear hears that.

[zhenhui]

Thanks Ian_Lee,

Is it true that for most(or all?) endings like ㅎㅈㄷ, they are pronounced "t"?

[Ferno]

okay 'hangook' - the "g" and the "k" are the same letter, right?

[zhenhui]

okay 'hangook' - the "g" and the "k" are the same letter, right?

yeah, i'm just confused as to when to read g and when to read k

[geraldc]

I'm now going to quote a chunk from the book that started off this thread...

"k, t, p, and ch are all written as such at the beginning of the a word; however, in actual pronunciation, they can be pronounced g, d, b and j if they are preceded and followed by vowel sounds. We do not indicate this in the romanization, so that you can be sure where you should be looking up words in dictionaries or glossaries. If you listen to the recording (as you should), you will be reminded when these letters should be pronounced in the different way.

However, in the middle of the a word, these letters k, t, p, ch are written as g, d, b and j when they occur between vowels. Therefore, the word which is written in Korean letters as ha-ko (the dash marking the syllable break) will be romanized here as hago."

from Teach yourself Korean by Mark Vincent and Jaehoon Yeon

[bhchao]

I have been taking Korean courses recently, and many students expressed confusion on the correct pronunciation of because whenever the instructor pronounced it, it sounded like 'k' to many students. The correct pronunciation is 'g', but pronounced in a subtle 'g' sound that may sound like a 'k'.

If you watched Korean dramas, phrases like "가!" ("ga", to go) sounds like "ka". Sometimes you cannot tell the difference whether it sounds like "ga" or "ka".

The alphabet letter pronounced with a 'k' is

Also there is protocol that should be followed when addressing others of a different status/age, reflecting Confucian influences. A kid should never address an adult "안녕". Instead "안녕하세요" is used. The adult can say "안녕" to the kid, but never the other way around.

Even in formal settings or between strangers, 안녕하세요 is the norm. 안녕 can be used in very casual settings, for example between boyfriend and girlfriend.

[skylee]

The "learn korean" books that I've read seem to say that "ㄱ" is pronounced "k" at the beginning of a word and "g" when it is elsewhere. And "ㅋ" is pronounced "k" (well I suppose wherever it is and I think it is used for transliterating foreign words so that the "k" will not be changed because of the position of the consonent).

Am I very wrong?

[bhchao]

The "learn korean" books that I've read seem to say that "ㄱ" is pronounced "k" at the beginning of a word and "g" when it is elsewhere

The way the book put it is misleading. If the reader takes that at face value, then he or she will go around pronouncing words beginning with ㄱ with a hard "k" or aspirated "k", which is incorrect.

I visited a Korean restaurant last night, and a sign posting a night special for 김밥 was romanised as "gim bap".

Atitarev probably summed it well here:

ㄱ at the beginning of the word is similar to Chinese "g" (gege) - unaspirated and somewhat voiced. If you say "k" without any aspiration it will be correct too...

A Chinese person will say "bai" and you will say he said "pai" if your ear hears that.

[skylee]

I think I have real problems with these apirated/unaspirated pronunciations. I have asked a friend who studied linguistics to demonstrate them for me and what her pronunciation sounded very funny to me. She said I found them funny because Cantonese pronunciations were not apirated. Don't know if she was right or wrong. Well it doesn't matter ...

[rose~]

I am also learning Korean! Yes, pronunciation is difficult.

I have Pimsleur, it is ok, but it is compact so only around ten lessons.

Does everyones else have it?

Also some great materials in Chinese available here is people's Mandarin is good enough.

Can anyone tell me, I want to input Korean on the computer, but how do I know which key is which? My keyboard is qwerty.

[geraldc]

Just find a picture on the net of a korean keyboard layout and use that.

http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/sscl/helpnotes/images/koreankbd.gif

[atitarev]

Stay tuned.

The first cut of my basic conversion Hangul to Roman is done. It's based on spelling, not on pronunciation (hab-ni-da, not haM-ni-da, JOI-song, not choe-song, etc). The obvious benefit for myself I found is when I convert to Roman, I can check if I spelled the Korean text correctly.

It only converts one way Hangul->Latin. Planning to do the reverse. Will only work if a delimiter (syllable-> Hangul character) is used. A little obstacle is double consonants and diphtongs. Will also convert to Cyrillic for my (former) fellow countrymen on the site captured in my signature.

I use the "soft keyboard" when typing in Korean, can't be bothered memorising the layout.

[Ferno]

i'm not learning korean, but rose~, i suggest you stop Pimsleur, and get ahold of Rosetta Stone Korean before you mess up your learning too early. Turn off the text...

[HashiriKata]

I think I have real problems with these apirated/unaspirated pronunciations. I have asked a friend who studied linguistics to demonstrate them for me and what her pronunciation sounded very funny to me.

Please send your friend to me for additional instruction! Since you speak Mandarin, you're already very familiar with aspirated/ unaspirated pronunciations. Below is the pinyin transcription of some random aspirated/ unaspirated pairs:

ba/pa, bian/pian,

dai/tai, dan/tan,

ge/ke, gen/ken,

ji/qi, jiang/qiang,

zha/cha, zhang/chang,

zou/cou, zeng/ceng, etc

NB: Some (un-enlightened ) people would say that these are voiced/voiceless pairs, but they are mistaken if they are still talking about Mandarin. Cantonese would have similar pairs but as I'm not an authority in Cantonese, I can't say for sure.

[skylee]

HashiriKata, thanks for the reply. I think I have no problem distinguishing between "k" and "g", but I don't think I know the difference between an "unaspirated k" and a "g". Or an "unaspirated p" and a "b", or an "unaspirated t" and a "d", etc.

many students expressed confusion on the correct pronunciation of ㄱ because whenever the instructor pronounced it' date=' it sounded like 'k' to many students. The correct pronunciation is 'g', but pronounced in a subtle 'g' sound that may sound like a 'k'.

If you watched Korean dramas, phrases like "가!" ("ga", to go) sounds like "ka". Sometimes you cannot tell the difference whether it sounds like "ga" or "ka".[/quote']

I don't know what "the correct pronunciation is 'g', but pronounced in a subtle 'g' sound that may sound like a 'k'" means. And "가!" sounds exactly as "ka" to me.

Does it have to do with adding an "h" sound somewhere?

[HashiriKata]

I don't think I know the difference between an "unaspirated k" and a "g". Or an "unaspirated p" and a "b", or an "unaspirated t" and a "d", etc.

Ok, since you speak both Mandarin and English, I hope you can tell the difference between the Mandarin /g/ and the English /g/. The Mandarin /g/ is an unaspirated /k/, which sounds slightly different from the English /g/. (The same applies to the pairs t/d, b/p, etc.)

As an illustration of the difference between an aspirated/ unaspirated and a voiced sound, let's take an example in English:

bark: the /b/ here is a voiced consonant.

park: the /p/ here is a voiceless consonant (aspirated).

spark: the /p/ here is also voiceless (or de-voiced) but is unaspirated, and this unaspirated /p/ is represented by the pinyin /b/ for Mandarin. When pronouncing this unaspirated /p/, you'll notice the puff of air accompanying the sound is weaker than when you pronounce the aspirated /p/ of the word "park".

In English, we don't normally use unaspirated p/ k/ t but when p/ k/ t is preceded by an /s/, the preceding /s/ causes the air to leak out first, so that p/ k/ t loses its force and becomes un-aspirated. For example: spin (cf. pin), stool (cf. tool), skill (cf. kill).

Does it have to do with adding an "h" sound somewhere?

The aspirated sound always sounds as if you've added an /h/ sound after it, because of the effect of the strong puff of air I mentioned above.

Did my explanation manage to make it more confusing for you?

[skylee]

It's ok. I can't distinguish between the mandarin "g" and the english "g", the b/p in bark and spark, and the p/t/k of spin, stool, and skill sound like b/d/g to me, which is probably why I can't tell the difference between ㄱ at the beginning of a word and ㅋ. It is at least logical and consistent.

[atitarev]

I am offering you a basic romanisation of the dialogues from Lesson 1 (http://www.chinese-forums.com/showpost.php?p=67874&postcount=1) (see my first post in this thread) à la Anatoli Titarev. Don't try to match to McCune-Reischauer or other standard romanisation. It shows how the Korean text is actually, you need to know that eg. "haBnida" is pronounced as "hamNida", that "l" between vowels is exactly like Japanese "r", finals "s", "j" and "d" are all pronounced as "t", etc. You won't go too wrong if you pronounce pairs b/p, g/k, d/t as in Chinese pinyin but use the tapes/CD's to get the right pronuciation:

Vowels and diphtongs are usually pronounced consistently and romanised differently. I chose a method without any dicaritics (eg. "eo" and "eu" instead of "ǒ" and "ǔ") and which matches the spelling.

1. an-nyeong-ha-se-yo-!

jang-min-: jae-min-ssi-! an-nyeong-ha-se-yo-!

jae-min-: ne-. an-nyeong-ha-se-yo-! jal- ji-naess-eo-yo-?

jang-min-: ne-, ne-. eo-di- ga-yo-?

jae-min-: ji-geum- si-nae-e-ga-yo-.

jang-min-: mueo- ha-leo- si-nae-e- ga-yo-?

jae-min-: bbang- sa-leo- ga-yo-.

jang-min-: na-do- bbang- sa-leo- si-nae-e- ga-yo-.

jae-min-: geu-leom- gat-i- ga-yo-.

jang-min-: ne-. gat-i- ga-yo-.

2. geon-bae-!

sang-min-: a-jeo-ssi-, so-ju- iss-eo-o-?

a-jeo-ssi-: ne-, ne-. iss-eo-yo-. so-ju-, maeg-ju-, yang-ju- da- iss-eo-yo-.

sang-min-: geu-leom-, maeg-ju- ha-na-ha-go- so-ju- ha-na- ju-se-yo-.

a-jeo-ssi-: ne-. al-gess-eo-yo-.

sang-min-: geu-li-go- an-ju-do-ju-se-yo-. mueo- iss-eo-yo-?

a-jeo-ssi-: goa-il-ha-go- o-jing-eo-ha-go- ma-leun-an-ju-ha-go- pa-jeon-ha-go-… da- iss-eo-yo-.

sang-min-: geu-leom- goa-il-ha-go- o-jing-eo- ju-se-yo-.

…

a-jeo-ssi-: yeo-gi- iss-eo-yo-. mas-iss-ge- deu-se-yo-.

sang-min-: gam-sa-hab-ni-da-.

…

sang-min-: geon-bae-!

The above was produced by my romanisation tool. It's a bit raw but does the job!

Here's some value to Chinese speakers:

안녕 (安寧) annyeong (as in "annyeong haseyo!")

맥주(麥酒) maegju

양주(洋酒) yangju

소주(燒酒) soju

안주 (按酒) anju

건배 (乾杯) geonbae

Too many alcohol related words in this text!