#learnkorean I’m working on a multilingual personal project here, the announcement will be soon. New languages are gradually being added, and I chose Korean as the second one because there are many Koreans in our region. So, I decided to figure out how this language “works”. I won’t be learning it seriously, but I will understand how to translate and at least recognize the brands in writing)
I’ll leave notes here. It will help me remember better, and others might find it interesting too.
There are paired sounds here – k/g, t/d, p/b, ch/j, and the r/l that behaves a bit differently. Overall, this means that in one case a Korean will read p, in another – b, and generally these letters will be slightly mixed up in foreign languages. Or not slightly.
For example, it turned out that there is no letter F in Korean, so my name is written without an f at all: 라오, and generally f in words is usually replaced by something indistinct, and “focus” will be read as “po-kos-sy” = 포커스. Sometimes other sounds are used. For example, the drink Fanta is 환타 (han-tAa).
Their “r” and “l”, like the Japanese, are essentially one sound. I did not understand how it is “one sound”. It turned out to be interesting. For example, the name “Liza” will be written in Korean as “라이자” (literally “raizA”).
They do not have the letter “v”, but there is a very similar sounding letter “b”. For example, by all accounts, “Vanya” will be recorded as “반야” (ban-nYa). True, I still do not quite understand why you can’t write the same name as “오안야” (wan-ya). I will ask a Korean colleague at work the day after tomorrow.
They do not have the sound “z”. There is the letter ㅈ, which sounds like J. It cannot replace “z”, but it is what it is.
Secondly, “r” at the end is never pronounced. Therefore, the name “Peter” will be written as “피터” (pi-tO)
Thirdly, in Korean, there is no such thing as several consonants in a row. Therefore, the name “Chris” will be written as “크리스” (ky-ris-sy).
Fourth, they have long voiceless consonants. kk, gg, pp.
Fifth, they have vowels in the alphabet that sound identical. For example, “ㅖ” and “ㅒ” both sound like “ye”, and ㅐ and ㅔ sound like “e”. Well okay, if you try very hard, a slight difference can be heard, but between “ᅫ” and “ᅬ” it is not heard at all (“we”, see hangul.ru). No one has cared about this for a long time. It used to be different, but now it has faded away.
Then there is a snag with pronunciation in that the pronunciation of a consonant changes depending on the following vowel. For example, 마 is read as a clean Russian “ma”, consisting of two letters, the first of which is sort of “m”, and the second – “a”. But 무, which consists of the same “m” (ㅁ), but paired with “u” (ㅜ), together produce a sound which is nothing like “muo”, but closer to “nu” or “gu”, and if “m” (ㅁ) goes with “i” (ㅣ), it is not read as “mi” (although that is exactly what the English transcription says), but “bi” (or “(b+m)”, “i”). The same story with “누”, which consists of “n” and “u” but is read together as “dy” or something like that. Hard to convey)
Interestingly, almost all Korean surnames consist of one syllable, and names – from two syllables. For example, the performer of Gangham style is not called Psy (싸이), which is a pseudonym, but 박재상 – Park or Bak (박), the surname, and Jae-sang (재상) – a common name in Korea. Names are made up of two signs, in this case Jae and Sang, which are selected from a relatively limited list of possibilities, with separate lists for men and women. Well traditionally, exceptions also exist. https://www.topikguide.com/find-korean-name-gender-male-or-female/ – they are listed here. Therefore, if a Korean writes to you, you can try to guess whether it is he or she exactly that way).
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 