Assignment
Comparison between sound system of Korean with one in English
The world comprises of many international languages. Among them, English is the most influential (Weber, 2008), with over nine hundred million users. Korean, being among the words in the world, is not as much used. However, in the recent past, language learners have shown interest in learning it and has consequently shot to be among the top 20 languages in the world. Below is a comparison between Korean sound system and the world most influential language. The comparison is going to be in terms of place of articulation, manner of articulation in consonants, and height in vowels.
- Place of articulation:
- Consonants are twenty-four in number. They are grouped into three main positional allophones. There are the checked or the final, medial and initial positional allophones. This dictates the way the sounds can be pronounced depending on their position in a word. The final form positional allophones are usually found at the end of phonological words and before continuant consonants such as t and k.the voiced form is found in “voiced” environment as well as after this voiced consonant sounds such as n and l. The initial form is used at the start of semantic words.
- The other hand, in English we have twenty-one consonant sounds. They are articulated in the different parts of the mouth. Their stress depends on the type of pf words in which they exist. yy
- Manner of articulation
- Refers to how different organs that help in pronunciation play their different roles. It refers to how the stream of air from the lungs gets out through different barriers to produce sound. In English, they are grouped as oral-nasal, the stop consonants-which is produced only after the complete stop of air from the lungs, fricative- where the air is stopped then released, liquid and affricative.the oral, nasal consonants, air flows through the nose. In Korean, things are different. First, there are no sounds as f, v, r, c, and j in Korean. Then, some sounds like the ng’ (which is a nasal sound in English) are not heard. This is only excepted when it appears before a syllable in a manner that it modifies it.
- Height in vowels
- Sounds are twelve in English and ten of them in Korean. In English, we have no high central vowels. They are instead classifying as either monophthongs or diphthongs. In Korean, we have light and dark types of vowels. This depends on o where the vowel points. In vowels pointing upwards, they are considered to be bright and hence positive. On the other hand, those facing down are considered negative and dark.
- Pronunciation constrains when Korean learn English
- Koreans do not have long and short vowels. They, therefore, tend to confuse /i/ and /I:) either, they also tend to constrain in pronouncing words with a diphthong, /əʊ/. They usually tend to ignore the double vowel. They also tend to add an extra vowel to given the word, after the final syllable position. Hey, also, have a problem in confusing sounds /r/ and /l/. Either, they are also vulnerable to rounding back if vowels. This makes it a bit complicated to understand the difference between work and walk. The other areas of pronunciation include /v/ and /m /, /w/ and the sounds.
- Pronunciation constrains when American learnsKorean
Either, there is also a high likelihood that Americans who struggle to get to know Korean also go through some tough times in the process. This mostly depends on the age of the learner and their levels of exposure to different languages. Otherwise, their inconsistencies and constrains are generally divergent.