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.
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