Details of the Korean Alphabet: What I Neglected to Teach You

WATCH THE LESSON:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaQi5QvwWA
The first five lessons should teach you what you need to know about the Korean alphabet. But, there are a few things I omitted, on purpose, because I think they are more confusing than helpful. However, everyone's brain works different, so perhaps this will be helpful to some people.

Here is one more detail pertaining to the consonant pairs. I taught you that when there are two different consonants in the batchim one of them goes silent. But, what I neglected to teach you, is that the initial consonant of the next syllable in the word is pronounced as if it were doubled. This means you pronounce it with extra emphasis.

Written like this

Pronounced like this

I felt like the lesson was complicated enough, and the difference between a single consonant and a double is rather difficult to hear. So, I omitted this detail. But, now you know it. So, keep it in the back of your mind.

Let me clarify something about the batchim. I’ve been talking a lot about the batchim, but in the videos I've been pronouncing it in a highly anglicized way. The word is written like this:
받침
Can you figure out how a Korean speaker would say it? The word batchim is supposed to be pronounced Pawt-cheem. Remember the B at the beginning of a word is pronounced as a P. Then the A is pronounced as an “Awww” not an “Ahhh” Remember the example I gave was “Far”. If you are British you’ve probably been pronouncing your As correctly all along but if you have an American accent then you better watch yourself. You better watch your “Ah”s because it's not “Ah”. It’s “Aw” like in “Far”.
Then, the D in the batchim position sounds like a T.
CH no surprise there,
Then we get to the “tree” vowel. When we translate the Korean letters into Roman letters the “tree” vowel is represented by an “i”. This can be confusing because in English the "i" often sounds like “ih” not “ee”. So, let this be a cautionary tale: if you think you can skip memorizing the Korean alphabet and just rely on Romanization, then you better, at least, memorize the official Romanization. Otherwise, you will be mispronouncing things, and no one will be able to understand you.
Even though pawt-cheem is the proper pronunciation  I will continue to call it the batchim. This is an acceptable pronunciation, and I find this title really intuitive. The first time I read the words ‘batchim position’ I automatically thought to myself ‘that must be the one on the bottom’, and whadaya know: it was! But, you may encounter teachers who refer to it as the pawt-cheem position, and now you know what that is too.

I have seen some people teach the batchim rules a little differently than I did. I told you that all these letters: ㅌㄷㅊㅈㅅㅆ sound like T in the batchim, but others say that these letters sound like D in the batchim. The reason for the discrepancy, as I described in an earlier lesson, is that Koreans don't put a big "tuh" at the end of their Ts. So, it does end up sounding a little bit like a D. In fact Koreans do not put a big aspiration at the end of any syllable. So, you will also notice the K sounds a bit like a G. But, bottom line, I think it is better to think of these as an unaspirated T(ㅌㄷㅊㅈㅅㅆ), or unaspirated K(ㅋㄱ). Just thought I would clarify.

On the subject of double consonants I have noticed that ㅃ is often romanized as double P. The interesting thing about P and B is that you do the exact same thing with your lips when you pronounce them. Try it! Say "puh, buh, puh, buh, puh, buh". Notice that you are doing the same thing with your lips. The difference is that you can say "puh" without using your vocal chords. Put your hand on the front of your neck. You can feel your vocal chords vibrating as you talk. Try it! Say “cheese”. You feel that, right? But, there are some letters you can pronounce without making your vocal chords vibrate. Now try to say "puh" without making your vocal chords vibrate. Only use your lips. It is possible, right? Now try to say “buh”. You have to use your vocal chords otherwise you just end up saying “puh” again. That is because B is what we call voiced, and P is unvoiced.
So, I take you through this exercise just to say that P and B are actually very similar letters, and, in somewhat of the same way R and L are combined into the same letter, the ㅃis both a double B, and also a double P.

While we are on the subject of voiced sounds vs unvoiced I think I should point out some other pairs. Put your hand on your neck, again, and say these sounds:

You should be able to say the ones on the right without using your vocal chords.
If you recall a few lessons back we learned that the first letter in a word tends to get different pronunciation. We can now see a pattern here and that pattern is: When a word begins with a voiced consonant it tends to be pronounced as its unvoiced partner. However, there is a subtlety to it. A voiced consonant at the beginning of a word does not sound completely like a the unvoiced version. You can think of it as being less voiced, but not completely unvoiced. It's in this grey area in between the two. You have to practice making a new sound that is in between a B and a P, in between a D and a T, between a J and a CH, between a G and a K. So practice making these new sounds, and pay attention to how native Koreans say them. You'll get the hang of it.

One more pronunciation detail about the letter ㅅ. We learned that it sounds like "s" when it is in the initial position of a syllable. But, we also saw an example of the Korean word "십일" (si bil) where it sounds like "sh". That is because when an ㅅ is followed by this vowel "ㅣ " the one that looks like a tree and sounds like "ee" it makes a "sh" sound, but when followed by any other vowel it makes a "s" sound.

Here is a new rule. It's called re-inforcement, or tensification. When you have any of the letters: ㄱㄲㅋㅌㄷㅅㅆㅈㅊㅂor ㅍ in the batchim, or, to put it more simply, a K, T, or P sound followed by one of the 5 letters which can be doubled: ㄱㄷㅂㅈorㅅ in the initial position of the next syllable then these initial consonants are pronounced as if they actually were doubled.

One more thing. I have been calling the Korean letters by the English name of their Roman equivalents, but these Korean letters do actually have names! I just find that the name of the letter is far less important than the sound it makes.When we're talking about vowels the sounds that they make are the names of the letters. But, each consonant has a Korean name. They are listed here.  I will continue using the English names for the equivalent letters. If you would like to learn the names then, of course, be my guest.

WATCH THE LESSON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjaQi5QvwWA

Details of the Korean Alphabet Pt2: Consonant Pairs AKA Clusters AKA Gyup Batchim

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This lesson is going to cover double consonants, but not the double consonants that we learned about in the last two lessons. We are covering the type of double consonants where there are two different consonants together.

These double consonants are usually found on the bottom of the character block, in the batchim.

To make things easier to talk about in this lesson we will label the positions of the character block like so. The initial position will be called the first position, the next is the second position, and in the batchim the leading consonant will be the third position, and the final consonant will be the fourth position. I know it’s kind of obvious, but I don’t want to confuse anyone unnecessarily.

When you encounter two different double consonants, usually, the consonant in the fourth position is silent. Except for some combinations that involve ㄹ. Let’s go over, explicitly, some of the most common letter pairs.

ㄴㅈ
The first combo is “N J”. In this letter pair the letter in the fourth position, “J”, is silent.

 

ㅂㅅ
We can, also, have “S” in the 4th position and “B” in the third, and, once again, the letter in the 4th position goes silent. We do not pronounce the “S”. This is a good time to mention that the batchim pronunciation rules that we learned in the last lesson are observed so the B sounds like "P".

ㄴㅎ and ㄹㅎ
Another common letter pair involves H in the 4th position, and either an N or an “RL” in the 3rd. In both these combinations the “H” goes silent.

ㄹㅂ and ㄹㅌ 
Finally, we can have an “RL” in the 3rd position. This part is tricky. If the 4th letter is B or T then the same rule we’ve been talking about applies. The 3rd letter is pronounced and the 4th goes silent. So these combinations are pronounced as “L”.

ㄹㅁ, ㄹㅍ, and ㄹㄱ
But! If the 4th letter is M, P, or G, then the 4th letter is pronounced and the 3rd goes silent. So these combinations are pronounce as M, P, and G BUT with a batchim pronunciation G sounds like "K".
So, in sum, when you have two different letters in the batchim only pronounce the 3rd letter. Unless you have the combination of “RL” with M, P, or G in which case pronounce only the 4th letter.
Remember MPG in combination with R/L. M, P, G. Miles Per Gallon! Or any other memory device you want to use.

But then, as we’ve seen before, things get more interesting when the next character begins with a “Nothing” consonant.

When this happens the letter in the fourth position moves into the initial position of the next syllable so you end up pronouncing both. This includes the oddball combinations with “RL”, but does not include the combinations involving ㅎ “H”. Let's go through it more slowly and clearly.

When you have N with J and a “nothing” consonant in the initial position of the next syllable you pronounce the N in the bottom of the first syllable, and pronounce the J as if it were in the initial position of the second syllable.

When you have the BS combination followed by a syllable that begins with the nothing consonant the B is pronounced in the batchim of the first syllable and the S is pronounced in the initial position of the second syllable. Now you may be confused about whether to use batchim pronunciation or normal pronunciation and how it works is like this: The letter which is pronounced in the batchim of the first syllable does get batchim pronunciation, but the letter which is carried over into the initial position of the next syllable does not receive batchim pronunciation. So, in this case, we have the B in the batchim position, so it is pronounced like "P". But, the S has been carried over so it retains normal pronunciation and it sounds like "S".

Now, here is the tricky one. When you have the letter ㅎ(H) it goes silent, and the letter in the 3rd position is carried over. If you have “NH” in the batchim and “Nothing” in the initial position of the next syllable you will pronounce the first syllable with two letters and the next syllable will begin with N. Or If you have “R/L H” the H goes silent and the “R/L” is pronounced in the initial position of the second syllable.

When you have any of the combinations R/L B or R/L T ( the regular ones ) or R/LM, R/LP, R/LG ( the exceptions) they all follow the same regular rule. The “R/L” is pronounced in the batchim of the first syllable and the B, T, M, P, and G are each carried over into the initial position of the next syllable. And remember the R/L is in the batchim so it sounds more like an L, but the letters in the 4th position are carried over, and so they obey regular pronunciation rules.

So, in sum, When the next syllable begins with the nothing consonant the letter in the fourth position moves into the initial position of the next syllable so you end up pronouncing both. Unless the 4th letter is “H” in which case the H is not pronounced and the letter in the 3rd position moves into the initial position of the next syllable.

That’s it for this lesson. It is only one concept, but it is a convoluted one. As these double consonants appear in later lessons I will remind you of their pronunciation. Also, there are a few words that break the rules. If we encounter them I’ll do my best to let you know.

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