Details of the Korean Alphabet Pt1- Batchim, Initial Consonant, etc

WATCH THE LESSON: https://youtu.be/YMPOpw2stCQ

So, last lesson we learned how to pronounce each Korean letter, and that they are arranged into character blocks which each represent one syllable. But, we didn’t spend much time learning how the letters are arranged in the blocks. You likely found it fairly easy and intuitive as the letters are read from left to right, and top to bottom, just we’re used to in English. However, there are few rules in how a character block is arranged and they are worth stating explicitly.

The first position is always a consonant. If your syllable does not start with a consonant then we learned that very useful NOTHING consonant which makes no sound at the beginning of a character.

The second position is always a vowel, and it is sometimes located to the right of the first consonant and sometimes located below the first consonant. It depends on the shape of the vowel. The vertical shaped ones go beside the first consonant, and the horizontal shaped ones go below the first consonant.

Some characters only contain letters in these two positions, and the third one is left empty. But, the third position in a character block is located on the bottom, and it can contain only consonants. The third position is also known as the batchim position, and when certain letters are located in the batchim position they are, in fact, pronounced completely differently from the way we learned in the last lesson!

The Batchim

We’ve already seen a little preview of this concept when we learned the NOTHING consonant. It makes NO sound at the beginning of a character, and an "NG" sound at the end of a character. That was the first Batchim pronunciation rule we learned.

Now, let’s learn the other ones, too.

ㅎ
Remember this letter? It’s the hat on the head which sounds like the letter H. However, if you ever see this letter on the bottom of a character don’t pronounce it like an H. When it is on the bottom it is silent. It makes no sound at all.

ㅂ
Now, this character, we learned, sounds like a B. But, when written in the batchim position it sounds like a P

ㄱ
This character sounds like a G, but when located in the batchim position it sounds like a K.

ㄲ
Remember doubles? They usually make the same sound as singles just with more emphasis. But, in the batchim position the double G just sounds like a single.

ㄹ
Also, that RL blend tends to sound a bit more like an L in the batchim.

ㄷ,ㅊ,ㅈ,ㅅ, and ㅆ

Now these letters: the D, the CH, the J, the S, and double S all sound like the letter "T" when located in the batchim position.

And yes, this means that if you have a name that ends in T it could be spelled 6 different ways. For example the name Matt can be written with the D letter on the bottom, the CH, the J, the S, the double S, or of course the T.

Now, an important point to bring up is that these pronunciation rules apply only when 1) the letter is in the batchim position and also 2) the next syllable in the word does not begin with the NOTHING consonant. When that happens the word is pronounced as if the batchim letter has been moved into the first position of the next syllable. It does not retain batchim pronunciation. It goes back to its normal pronunciation.

Let’s look at the case of the letter ㅂ. If you see ㅂ in the batchim followed by a character with NOTHING consonant in the initial position, just as I have written here, then you pronounce it like so.

The first character has two letters and the second one begins with a "B" sound.

Also, the same thing happens with ㄱ. When written like this. (see picture) It is pronounce like this.(see picture)

Now let’s look at an example of an actual word: sib il ("shee beel") (which is Korean for the number 11) and is pronounced "shee beel", not "sheep eel"

Did you take my suggestion and practice Korean writing by writing your name? You may need to make a change now that you’ve learned this new pronunciation rule.

Another thing to note is that Koreans don’t put much emphasis on the last consonant. When we say the name Matt we make a big “tuh” at the end of it. You make noise when you exhale. But, when Koreans say the name Matt they would just say Matt and then breathe silently. It is a habit that is a little difficult to get into, I find. But one thing that I have started doing is holding my breath for a fraction of a second at the end of the word to give myself time to figure out how to breathe silently without making the “tuh” sound. If anyone else has any tips to share I would love to hear them.

The Beginning of a Word

So, as I was just describing, letters can be pronounced differently when they are at the end of a syllable and now we will learn that they can also be pronounced differently at the beginning of a word. Note that I said beginning of a word, not syllable, WORD. Only the very first letter in a word will have these special pronunciation rules... and they are not so much rules as they are just tendencies.

ㄱ

Let’s start with "G". When "G" is at the beginning of a word it sounds like "K"

ㅋ

Now when "K" is at the beginning of a word it sounds like "Kh".

What does a "Kh" sound like? Well, we don’t usually make the distinction in English but have you ever noticed there is an “h” in the word khaki? We’re supposed to be saying "khaki" not just "kaki", "Khaki". It is subtle. But that is how you would say a K when is is at the beginning of a Korean word. Have you ever heard a Korean say he word “Korean”. They say it with an h! They say "Khorean".

ㄷ

Moving on, When "D" is at the beginning of a word it sounds like a "T".

ㅈ

When "J" is at the beginning of a word it sounds like a "CH"

ㅂ

When "B" is at the beginning of a word it sounds like a "P"

Go back to where you wrote your name. Do you need to rewrite it again?

Also, let’s take some time to note that there are no Korean equivalents for the letters F, V, and Z or the combination TH. The S usually serves as an SH blend and Koreans do tend to pronounce their S a bit like an SH anyways. If your name contains a TH you can use a T or an S instead whichever sounds better to you.

In place of a Z the convention is to use a J. The Korean word for Pizza is Pija. In place of a V you can use a B. And the most common substitution for F is P. Coffee in Korean is Kuppi.

Another problem you might encounter in writing your name is blends like TR KR GR DR BR BL what Koreans do with these blends is insert a vowel between the two consonants. Usually, it is the BROOK vowel

So if your name is BRAD you write BEU RAD but wait! We just learned Batchim rules. This doesn’t say Brad, it says Brat! No one wants to be called a BRAT! So we add another brook vowel to the very end:

BEU RA DEU

We had to change a 1 syllable name into a 3 syllable name but we have now managed to write a western name in Hangul.

But wait, we just learned that a B at the beginning of a word sounds like a P! That doesn’t say BRAD it says PRAD! How do we fix that? Well, we can’t. So, enjoy your new name, Prad.

No, actually we can do something about that. Remember we learned about double consonants? Only 5 Korean letters can be doubled, but, luckily, all the letters which are pronounced different at the beginning of a word are included in those 5. So, you can use a double consonant if you really want to preserve the pronunciation of your first initial. But this not commonly done for Korean names you’d be much better off embracing the new pronunciation of your name. I did!

There is one more lesson on the details of the Korean alphabet. That will be the next video/post!

Linked Korean letters and Roman equivalents including batchim pronunciation

Thanks for watching!

WATCH THE LESSON: https://youtu.be/0lmYzofNaB0