Help talk:IPA/Korean

Tense diacritic
Since doesn't show up on my (and possibly many others') IE display, maybe we should immitate its graphical equivalent. If it's a "subscript double straight quotation mark" does that mean that is  ? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:50, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No, because the latter doesn't place as a diacritic. It should be under the letter. There are other symbols which have been used for this, but they're all counter-intuitive.
 * We should fix the IE problem if we can. It looks fine when I toggle to IE display (within FF), so maybe it's just a matter of needing to have a font installed which has this symbol. kwami (talk) 21:25, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm sure it's a font issue. I'm just concerned that many people who look at Wikipedia don't have the right font.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  22:12, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Me too. I just don't know what to do about it. There's a danger of catering to the lowest common denominator, in that we could retain a legacy of compromised data long after the fonts and browsers are no longer an issue. I can't imagine it'll be too long before IE has proper font support, for example (though that's not the issue here). E.g., if a user hasn't installed full font support in his OS, he might not be able to see hangul at all. kwami (talk) 22:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Here's another possibility, the ExtIPA symbol for faucalized voice, . However, besides being obscure and a pain to typeset, it isn't very intuitive. kwami (talk) 08:44, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Vowels
The vowels must have different notes! --Kjoonlee 22:36, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Different how? Also, I reverted your latest edits, as it mixed up aspiration of the stops. kwami (talk) 22:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * 에 is most certainly not a diphthong like the one in "main". The main Korean vowels all have very flat formants. And about aspiration.. the English examples used aspiration in them. In Korean aspiration is a distinctive feature, so I wanted to point out that final unreleased stops didn't have any aspiration in them. --Kjoonlee 22:54, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should say "similar to" the vowel in main. It really is the closest approximation and a number of English speakers pronounce this as a monophthong.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  07:44, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I tried that with "main", but I just can't do the same with "moan". Maybe descriptions from Help:IPA would be better. --Kjoonlee 08:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * shore? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  08:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a start, but in my accent "shore" is definitely diphthongal as well, if you get what I mean. There is a shift in the formants. --Kjoonlee 11:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * More is also a much lower vowel than Korean /o/, which is almost as high as English moon. kwami (talk) 16:49, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Well I made this suggestion when I looked at the vowel charts at Korean phonology. Depending on dialect, the vowel in more is mid to open-mid; in Korean, depending on length, this vowel is mid to close-mid.  I'd say that's the closest we're going to get to an approximation.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  18:51, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The vowel 'a' as in 'saw' might be better example than the 'o' (and the 'r') of the word 'more'.75.27.242.177 (talk) 03:49, 9 October 2010 (UTC)hchung
 * Except that it's a low vowel for many speakers (including myself). — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 04:01, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Plain, aspirated, tense
Hi, Korean has a distinction between plain, aspirated and tense stops.


 * Plain is neither aspirated nor tense.
 * Aspiration is like in English "pin."
 * English "spin" sounds tense to Korean ears.

Thus I strongly object to the use of English words like "spar / star / scar" to denote anything other than tense stops. --Kjoonlee 22:57, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay, but the t in at is frequently aspirated, so it's not a good equivalent of Korean tenuis [t]. kwami (talk) 23:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I was a bit worried about that. --Kjoonlee 23:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe we could give examples from Spanish?
 * Or for [p], maybe napping rather than nap? kwami (talk) 23:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * But in my British accent napping is aspirated as well. Maybe Spanish or French might be better. --Kjoonlee 23:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Really? I though it was almost universal that there was no aspiration in positions like that. kwami (talk) 23:11, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * In my case it still counts as "start of syllable" and requires aspiration; so napping, written (if I don't use a glottal stop), retail and booking all have aspiration. I speak mostly RP. --Kjoonlee 23:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I always thought "rilly?" and "napping" (with the same p as in "spin") were American traits, the same way I thought "fingernells" was Canadian. Anyway... I'd say napping would definately be aspirated in RP. --Kjoonlee 23:21, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hm. Is the ambisyllabicity in napping also American? That's the aspiration rule I've seen: Syllable-initial stops are aspiration, which excludes ambisyllabic stops. kwami (talk) 17:35, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Check out the note about sibilants at Help:IPA chart for Polish. Our "notes" description doesn't have to illustrate all contrasts with English examples and an explanatory note could suffice.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  07:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

linked
This chart can now be transcluded through IPA-ko. kwami (talk) 06:53, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

correct /n/, please
Given that is pronounced, our description of /n/ would appear to be wrong. But the claim that both ㄹㄴ and ㄴㄹ may be /ll/ has stood for some time without correction. Can someone elucidate? kwami (talk) 07:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I think ㄹㄴ and ㄴㄹ can both be /ll/, at least regionally. I pronounce 물난리 "watery disaster; flooding" as /mullalli/, and 선릉 is either seolleung or seonneung depending on speaker. --Kjoonlee 02:51, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * 선로 will be a better example (since 선릉 is a place name with a funny reading), which is definitely ll. --Kjoonlee 03:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Alignment of layout
Kwami, can you be more clear why you reverted alignment of the layout in this help page? &minus;Woodstone (talk) 21:30, 2 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I guess I never saw your question. kwami (talk) 08:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Question
Can someone check Seung-Hui Cho? Is Hui really pronounced [ɣi]? kwami (talk) 08:25, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Please edit the sound notation of ㅇ. It can be silent, not always sounded.

Vowels
Is this reflective of how this template is used on Wikipedia? If so, it should be deprecated since we're trying to stick with one variety that happens to be Standard South Korean pronunciation. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 08:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Which should we go with? My understanding is that the first is the more common description, but the second the more common pronunciation. kwami (talk) 09:10, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * We can perhaps look at English as a precedent, since it's largely inaccurate for most speakers but is still very common as a transcription symbol.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  10:01, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Dialectology
Could somebody with more knowledge of Hangul than me look over the article on the Jeolla dialect? The transcriptions don't look right to me. For example, the tenuis consonants of Korean have voiced allophones inside of words.

While we're at it, it couldn't hurt to look at the material on other dialects as well (assuming there is any, because there doesn't seem to be much on them, period). Thanks. - AlexanderKaras (talk) 03:05, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Vowel ɯ versus Approximant ɰ
Ahn & Iverson 2007 mention a new diphthong, /ɯi/. Is there a reference for using a voiced velar approximant for the diphthong instead?

Here is the Ahn & Iverson 2007 citation:

Ahn, S., & Iverson, G. K. (2007). Structured Imbalances in the Emergence of the Korean Vowel System. Historical Linguistics 2005: Selected papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Madison, Wisconsin, 31 July - 5 August 2005 (pp. 275-293). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Retrieved 28 December 2010 from http://www.uwm.edu/~iverson/kordiph.pdf Flexlingie (talk) 20:34, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * In parallel with the other diphthongs, we should transcribe the diphthongs with approximants to make clear which element is prominant. Based on the source you've provided, it seems like we should transcribe it as . — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  20:52, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't you mean ? /j/ is part of the on-glide diphthongs.Flexlingie (talk) 21:24, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean. may be best, then.  Are there any other falling diphthongs in Korean? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  21:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I don't believe so. That's the only one I've seen in my research. The others start with /w/ or /j/.Flexlingie (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Flexlingie, the ref you give uses ‹ɨy›, which for us would be ‹ɯj›. There were four articles that used that sequence; check my edits for this time stamp if you wish to review them.
 * BTW, that seems like an interesting article. Thanks for it. — kwami (talk) 02:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I think ‹ɨy› is from 19th century Korean. Page 12 of that document has the Modern Korean diphthongs. This particular one in question is in the third table on the right-hand side of the page. So, I think it should still be . Also, this article lists no off-glides for modern Korean. From the paper, "all of the off-glides of Middle Korean have been lost." Flexlingie (talk) 04:21, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I should have read that more closely. They do say that it is, with an on-glide as we had it originally, and that it is "seldom" like it used to be. If we adopt their transcription convention of , the reader won't be able to tell whether it has an on-glide, an off-glide, or is a vowel sequence like you get in Japanese. I'll revert my changes.
 * (They actually have, perhaps due to assimilation to the [i], but since that's not accepted IPA, and we already have in the chart, perhaps it's best to stick to . Either that, or introduce the non-syllabic diacritic just for this one diphthong.) — kwami (talk) 08:25, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm confused - they list the diphthong as . Why would be used here? I don't see the use of  in that paper, and I think it makes more sense to use  since it is also listed as a monophthong.Flexlingie (talk) 17:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Because they say it's an onset, not a syllabic vowel . They're not being precise in their notation, though they do write it elsewhere. — kwami (talk) 20:04, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * OK - I think that makes sense now. I'm curious as to why the authors would not have used as well. Cool! Flexlingie (talk) 21:06, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe because they feel that they don't need to be that precise, since they explain the details? Also, is an uncommon letter. But they could just write, so I don't know. — kwami (talk) 21:31, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Isn't ㅟ still pronounced [y] by some older speakers? This ref seems to back that up, making it contemporaneous with [ø] for ㅚ. We had that in the chart once, but it was deleted as unreferenced. For a basic chart, maybe we should remove both? — kwami (talk) 08:59, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * According to Ahn & Iverson 2007, both of those sounds are now "on-glide diphthongs with w."Flexlingie (talk) 17:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Vowel ɯ versus ɨ
I'm now curious as to why is used as the unrounded counterpart for ? Most all other references I've seen refer to the vowel as (e.g., Lee & Ramsey 2000; Sohn 1999; Kim 1999; Ahn & Iverson 2007; Yang 1996; Yoon 1996; Yang 1992; Kim 1968). Sohn 1999 describes the sound as a high, back, unrounded vowel (p. 156), so I would tend to agree based on that description that it should be. However, Ahn & Iverson 2007 describe it as a central vowel. What are your thoughts, and what other references have you found that help clarify this issue? Flexlingie (talk) 02:35, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The IPA Handbook has Korean, and plots the vowels as we have them at Korean phonology. Assuming they're correct, and that they used a representative speaker, that would be a back vowel. — kwami (talk) 08:33, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The Korean wikipedia's ko:Talk:Korean phonology page has the same discussion as its first topic. I think it's generally agreed to be somewhere between cardinal and cardinal, but there's a lot of free variation. Anyway, the symbols represent a single phoneme, regardless of how you write it. --Kjoonlee 13:33, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Chongjin
Bad transcription. I fixed up the consonants, but don't know about vowel length. — kwami (talk) 06:57, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The current version, 청진시 Cheongjin-si, looks fine in terms of the transcription. The vowel is short. However, since it's in North Korea, I've changed it to . — Iceager (talk) 11:10, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

do we want [ɸ]?
Cleaning up the transcriptions, and I've come across a fair number with [ɸ] before [w]. Do we want to transcribe that way, or should 회 just be [hwe]? — kwami (talk) 09:01, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
 * No, [ɸ] before [u] or [w], like [x] before [ɯ] and [ç] before [i] or [j], would be too narrow a transcription (at least in the current version of the Korean phonology page, they are not even mentioned). It would be very misleading as well, as these optional allophones of /h/ are usually much, much weaker than the sounds in other languages that are described by these symbols. They are usually approximants, not actual fricatives (in Korean, optional fricative pronunciations of /h/ only occur word-initially in emphatic speech for some speakers). In fact, I'm not convinced that an actual fricative [ɸ] occurs at all in natural Korean speech. These allophones simply don't come even close to being notable enough to be used in a general-purpose transcription. If we are transcribing allophones of /h/, it would be much, much more relevant to transcribe [ɦ] between voiced sounds, as this weak (and often dropped) sound is known to throw off learners of Korean. — Iceager (talk) 11:44, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Transcription request
I would appreciate IPA transcriptions for Noh Seung-yul and Bae Sang-moon. (suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ) nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 16:24, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

ɦj
The sounds /ɦ/ and /j/ appear to be absent from this chart, even though they are both used in Park Geun-hye. I assume /ɦ/ is an allophone of /h/, while /j/ simply seems to have been forgotten, hasn't it? MuDavid (talk) 07:28, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * You are correct about, and I have now reverted an unexplained removal of . But your questions have caused me to notice some things we probably want to clear up for the sake of the reader.  User:Vindication has been doing great work adding transcriptions for Korean, but the guide currently doesn't account for how sandhi between family and given names can change how they're pronounced together versus separately.  It looks like Vindication's solution has been to transcribe them twice, once each way, but this is kind of a messy workaround.  I decided to be bold on Park Geun-hye and go with .  The tie bar makes it explicit that the words together have mutated somehow, and if we add it to this guide it would give us a place to add a note about the common sandhi effects throughout Korean.  Thoughts?  — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 18:10, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Help talk:IPA which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:17, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

"e" and "ɛ"
What English dialect is being used for the vowels here? The "e" in "set" is claimed to be IPA [e], but it is definitely [ɛ] in both GA and RP - so says Wiktionary, anyway. Wiktionary also refers to "says" as having [ɛ], and "rays" as having [eɪ], which would presumably make it closer to [e]. Perhaps this should be cleared up, somehow? &#32;- Franxz (talk) 20:58, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Gapjil pronunciation
Hi. Please add the IPA pronunciation of the word Gapjil in the namesake article. Thanks! Thinker78 (talk) 05:11, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Comparision of RP ʌ and Korean ʌ
Hi, it seems as if users Aeusoes1 and Nardog both have an issue with me trying to make the approximation for the Korean ʌ a bit more accurate to its phonetic sound because I have listened to both this vowel in Korean and the vowel used in RP for words like strut, mud etc. and from what I've listened the sound used for Korean is absolutely NOT the same as the ʌ sound used in RP. Yes the same symbol is used in RP I will admit for traditional/convenience purposes but even though Nardog claimed when reverting my second edit that strut is the same in RP and GA, the symbol in RP actually phonetically represents the Near-open central vowel (ɐ), not the Open-mid back unrounded vowel like Korean and to say otherwise is very misleading in my opinion. The open-mid back unrounded vowel to me sounds a lot closer phonetically to the vowel used in the English words like song or off rather than mud, strut (except perhaps in American English because this vowel is used in some American dialects from what the link from that sound shows) in RP which is why I don't think mud is a very accurate approximation to use here (to me at least as I grew up in England even though I'm off Asian origin). Another reason why I'm interested in changing the approximation is because I've recently listened to the Korean pronunciation of Samsung in some videos (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7anPmip9Xf4) which to my English ears sound a lot like "samsong" rather than "samsahng" as it would in RP and many other English dialects in the south of England which was why I changed the approximation to off before Aeusoes1 reverted it claiming Korean phonology explained it, but when I looked into that article afterwards, I saw no explanation whatsoever to suggest that the vowel is the same as in RP. Due to listening to Koreans pronouncing Samsung, looking for the phonetic sounds in Wikipedia was rather confusing for me because the same IPA ʌ symbol is used in RP and Korean despite the sounds being somewhat different for both and the approximation here stating it sounds like mud in English, now it probably would in some American, South African and a few South East England accents but the sound is completely different to the RP one. I probably would have reverted Nardogs edit if it wasn't for the fact that I attempt to avoid edit wars when possible and because for the most part I do respect other peoples opinions. So I would be very grateful if either Aeusoes1 and Nardog or anyone else can point me in the right direction and if possible, explain to me either why the mud approximation should be kept or if there is another way to change that than what I was doing, many thanks. Broman178 (talk) 05:32, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I pointed to Korean phonology because it has a vowel chart indicating the position of Korean short to be at or near the cardinal position for that vowel. A cardinal  typically sounds like the STRUT vowel to most English speakers. It looks like Nardog has restored off with the logic that some dialects have a rounded pronunciation of this vowel. I'm not 100% behind this reasoning, especially because the vowel of off is variable depending on English dialect, but I can be convinced; I would feel a little more comfortable making this change if it were based on more than just the impressionistic approach of listening to an audio file.
 * Plus, if it's rounded in some dialects, we might want to mention that somewhere at the Korean phonology page. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 14:45, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply, I can somewhat see your point with the Korean phonology vowel chart however I might point out the the strut vowel in English is also variable because it varies from ʌ, ɐ (the main sound used for strut in most English varieties), ʊ, ɘ, ɜ and a few others depending on the English dialect (e.g. ɐ used in most of Southern England is replaced with ʊ in the northern half of England), and most English transcriptions use the ʌ symbol although for RP and most English phonetic transcriptions, that very symbol actually represents the ɐ vowel phonetically in English rather than the back vowel of ʌ used in Korean. So while I partially agree the Korean ʌ is similar to the English ʌ, its definitely not the same sound at all (unless you count some American, South African English dialects and even in them from what I've looked up, it can be replaced by ɐ phonetically in some cases) which is where I came in to start off with, and I personally feel off, as variable as the vowel may be, is a lot more accurate in my opinion than mud as an approximation for that sound (I'm interested in hearing a response from Nardog on this matter because only if we come to an agreement can this be resolved) and I also do think audio files are important in finding the true approximation for these sounds (I might also point out that in the new Nepali IPA page, off is also used as an approximation for the ʌ back vowel which is also present in Nepali alongside Korean and I used off because the ɐ vowel used for most cases of English strut is present in Nepali as well, so if you were to change it here to strut or mud, you'd have to change it there too to keep the consistency). Broman178 (talk) 17:35, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

English approximations for /y/ and /ø/
Given that most speakers of Standard Korean do not have front rounded vowels in their phonological inventory anymore, should we keep recommending English /juː/ as in refute as an approximation of /y ~ wi/? The closest mapping for Korean /ø ~ we/ is probably English /wɛ/ as in wet, but the onglide in Korean /y ~ wi/ is a lot more palatal, and it contrasts with /ɰi/. I went ahead and changed the examples to /wiː/ as in tweet, but I’m willing to discuss this further. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stanaita (talk • contribs) 09:05, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Two little bars under geminate consonants
What are the two little bars under the geminate consonants called? Like ɕ͈ 73.118.208.246 (talk) 02:34, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Aspirated /s/
I remember seeing /s/ formerly represented as /sʰ/ (for example at Seoul), with a useful additional aspiration mark, in line with other Korean aspirated consonants. Is there some reason this is no longer the case? Thanks. Wolfdog (talk) 13:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)