Monday, April 29, 2024

jumping consonants in Korean

Have I never done a post on the phenomenon of jumping consonants in Korean? I could've sworn I'd done such a post years ago, but I can't find it.

Anyway, I'm a shitty speller in Korean, and part of the problem is how Korean syllables are subject to what in French is called liaison, i.e., when a phoneme ending one syllable becomes the initial sound of the next syllable. There may be another linguistic term for this in English linguistics, but liaison (explained in depth here) is what I know from learning French.

Some French examples of liaison:

les hommes ("ley zuhm," with the "s" in les jumping over to hommes)
mes amis ("mey zamee," with the "s" in mes jumping over to amis)

Here's an English example of what I mean phonetically:

Did you forget about it?

The above isn't pronounced did / you / forget / about / it ? It's pronounced:

dih / j(y)oo / forgeh / dabou / dit ?

See how the consonants jump over to the following syllable? And note, too, that if someone pronounces the sentence as did / you / forget / about / it ?, over-enunciating like that, it's probably because he or she is very angry.

In Korean, liaison, or something like it, is a thing, and it often expresses itself orthographically (i.e., via spelling). Take the verb "to fall," which is 떨어지다/ddeoleojida or ddeoreojida (with the "r" flapping off the tip of the tongue like a Spanish "r"). If you were to spell the verb out phonetically, you'd get:

떠 러 지 다 / ddeo reo ji da

...but then, you'd be spelling the verb incorrectly. So you can't always rely on what you hear to know how to spell something in Korean.

This is a rich topic that deserves a lot of space, but I'm going to skip right over to a peeve of mine: the frustrating way that consonants in Korean can "jump," liaison-like, when you go from one form of a word to another. This often shows up in Korean spelling, making things tough for us slow-witted Kevins. So, it's an orthographic liaison as much as it's a phonetic liaison. Right off the top of my head, I can think of a few examples:

1. When you want to say "a few days ago" or "several days ago," the word myeot/몇 ("how many" or "several") combines with the word il/일 to become 며칠, i.e., myeo-chil, not myeoch-il. Just look at the phrase 며칠 전에/myeochil jeonae, i.e., "several days ago." Note how the ㅊ/chieut has jumped from the previous syllable to the next one.

2. Another one is how the expression 밖에/bakkae ("outside," "outside of") has a consonant jump when you use one expression of "husband," which is 바깥 사람/bakkat saram (a husband can be called an "outside person" in Korean, based on the old idea that the worker or nobleman left home to go to work). Note how the ㄲ/ssang-gieuk (double "g") has jumped from the previous syllable to the next one.

3. A third example of consonantal jumping has to do with the verb 가지다/gajida, to have or possess. This can become 갖고있어요/gatgoisseoyo ("[I] have/[I] am possessing"). Maybe I should've written these examples in the opposite order, but note how the ㅈ/jieut (letter "j") jumps from the lat(t)er syllable to the previous one.

Can you Korean speakers think of other examples? I want to compile a list of jumping consonants. Leave your insights in the comments. And if you know the proper linguistic terms for what I'm talking about, please let me know. Also: I'm aware that hair-splitters might argue that liaison and consonant-jumping are not the same phenomenon, but I'd say the phenomena are awfully damn close and involve pretty much the same phonetic move, with consonants migrating from the final position in one syllable to the initial position in another or vice versa.



3 comments:

  1. 연음법칙
    Think it translates as something like 'linking-pronunciation-rule'.

    있읍니다 would be another classic simple example.

    Has it's very own wikipedia page which says of it: 연음 법칙(連音法則, linking)은 자음으로 끝나는 음절에 모음으로 시작되는 형식형태소가 이어질 때 앞 음절의 끝소리가 뒷 음절의 첫소리가 되는 음운현상을 말한다. 음절의 경계가 달라진다 which I'd say roughly translates as 'The linking pronunciation rule is a phonological phenomenon that states that when a syllable ending with a consonant precedes a formal morpheme starting with a vowel, the sound of that consonant is taken on as the first sound of the next syllable.' Or something.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Neil,

    Sounds a lot like the Korean version of liaison, so it explains the phonetic aspect (thank you for the linguistic term), but is it also the rule for the orthographic phenomenon of jumping consonants? In other words, it explains something like this:

    말이 (roll, as in 계란말이) sounds like "마리"

    But does it explain

    밖에 → 바깥 (spelling)

    ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you for making my head hurt so early in the morning...

    ReplyDelete

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