Korean for Fun

[Sizen]

In an attempt to rekindle my love of languages, I’ve been dabbling in Korean and Mandarin, while of course keeping in touch with French and Japanese. I’m trying not to have a set schedule, which is how I work best looking back on my study history. I always just followed what felt right in the moment and went from 0 to N1 Japanese and broken French from French Immersion to understanding most things in a few years each back in the day. So that’s what I’m doing again.

For Mandarin I’m using LingoDeer (Chinese II), Assimil and the Chairman’s Bao (Typically the HSK level 1 & 2 texts since I already know most of the words and grammar). I’ve realized that I don’t really care for learning to write characters anymore. At least not in the way I used to. When I studied Japanese, I got to about 1500 characters before I stopped practising writing and started simply learning new characters by coming across them and learning/intuiting their readings. This worked, because now I know at least one reading for something like 2500 characters last time I checked going through the Joyo and Jinmeiyo Kanji lists and cataloguing the Hyogaiji I knew as I came across them. At this point, it’s fairly easy for me to associate readings with old and new characters in Chinese, so rather than slogging through the dull work of writing them by hand X times or testing my ability to write with SRS, I’ve just admitted to myself that I have no need or desire to do that and have stopped. I’m learning to read just fine. I’ve also admitted that I don’t have to limit myself to materials with Traditional characters, even though I prefer them. This has made studying Mandarin so much more fun for me. In fact, approaching it not as a duty I need to accomplish every day but as a fun way to pass the time when the mood strikes has made me start to believe I might actually like Mandarin. Astonishing since I always felt like I simply had no affinity for it.

I’m remembering that if I just put the time into it, I will make progress, even when the language seems unintuitive, like Mandarin always did for me. There are still occasions that make me doubt that I understand any of the logic of the language, but I’m just letting those moments be. As an example, I came across this sentence: 从现在到2024年1月21日，人们在深圳开车都不可以鸣喇叭。 Now don’t get me wrong. I understand what the sentence is saying: “Starting now until January 21, 2024, people driving in Shenzhen cannot honk their horns.” What I find perplexing, and is undoubtedly not so for anyone even slightly more familiar with the language than me, is the actual breakdown of the sentence. I understand that in 人们 is the subject of 不可以鸣喇叭, but I’m then confused by 在深圳开车, because it seems like it’s acting as some sort of right-branching relative clause (I.e. “who drive in Shenzhen”). As far as I’m aware, all relative clauses are left-branching in Mandarin, so it seems weird to me. I still get the sentence. I just don’t understand why it’s not 在深圳开车的人们都不可以鸣喇叭. Oh well.

My dad has Assimil for Cantonese because I bought it for him for his birthday one year since he expressed wanting to learn it given he's had to work in Hong Kong a number of times over the last decade or so. I'm always tempted to snatch it back and give Cantonese a shot myself. But I don't actually see myself studying Cantonese any time soon.

For Korean I’m mostly just using LingoDeer and the Refold KO1K deck that I think I saw Lawyer&Mom mention in a post. I might get Assimil too. In fact, I kind of just want it for my collection. I also feel like I might eventually subscribe to TTMIK, but I'm quite happy with what I have for the time being. Korean feels so much easier compared to Mandarin so far. Like going from French to Spanish. Having only ever looked at basic phrases, a few words and hangul in the past, I’m finding it interesting to delve a bit deeper and learn how... irregular hangul actually is. I don’t think anything is as bad as the 5~6 different ways to realize ん in Japanese, but it is fun to see that a phrase like 중국문화 junggug munhwa is actually realized as junggung munhwa. Love that backwards nasal assimilation. I’ve also just been generally learning about the language and how there are dialects that still have pitch accent or vowel length. Sometimes the recordings in LingoDeer are pronounced in such a way that I wonder if the speaker is from Busan. But I have such little experience that I have no way of knowing. I’m also watching Alchemy of Souls on the recommendation of one of my coworkers. It's fun because I can pick out random words and phrases, sometimes just because of my knowledge of Japanese, like 준비, 시간 or 약속.

In Japanese stuff, I’ve started looking at Kanbun. Why? I don’t know. I don’t particularly have a need to read Kanbun, let alone Classical Japanese, but I loved learning that. I think I just like knowing things about Japanese even if I have no use for them. There is a part of me that thinks it would probably be easier to just learn Classical Chinese after I get to a higher level in Mandarin, though. As one might expect, it really doesn’t make much sense to read Classical Chinese (or an approximation of it) as Classical Japanese. Oh well, it’s kind of fun and the book I found to learn it is nice. It’s formatted as a dialogue between a teacher and her student, which makes it feel more like I’m interacting with a teacher. Fun stuff.

I don’t know if I’ll actually keep this updated very often, but I kind of felt like posting something, so here it is.

[Sizen]

Korean is super interesting coming from Japanese.

I find myself having a lot of fun trying to figure out if I already know a Korean word because of Japanese or not. Some that I’ve been able to guess so far have been 가족 (gajok) because of 家族 (kazoku), 가격 (gagyeok) because of 価格 (kakaku), 유명 (yumyeong) because of 有名 (yuumei), etc. I was really proud of myself guessing 녹색 (noksaek) because I didn't immediately think of the reading ryokushoku for 緑色, but even then the ry -> n conversion threw me for a loop.

Particles are interesting. I knew to expect some differences in use, and there certainly are. Already I’m seeing that Korean uses the subject particle in places where I’d expect the topic particle, like in the sentence “이름이 뭐예요” (ileum-i mwoyeyo ) “What’s your name?” This construction almost sounds rude if translated literally to Japanese 名前がなんです (namae ga nan desu)？ Change that desu to da and it can come across aggressive, albeit the meaning is different: “What of (his/her/my/etc) name!?”

Another interesting discovery is the particle 하고 (hago), “with/and”, which looks to be from the verb 하다 (hada), “to do”. In fact, it looks exactly like して (shite) in Japanese, at least in form. して (shite) comes from the verb する (suru), which also means “to do”, and it can also be used to connect sentences (“I do, and...”). And while the similarities would seem to end there, it’s interesting to note that in Classical Japanese, して (shite) was sometimes used as a particle, and one of its meanings was “with”, the classic example being from the Tales of Ise: もとより友とする人ひとりふたりしていきけり (moto yori tomo to suru hito hitori futari shite ikikeri) “He went with one or two people who were his friends from before.” [Side note. I’ve always thought it was weird how unspecific this is. You’d know if it was one friend or two! It’s not like there were 20 or so. It’s easy to count one or two.]

I also find it fascinating that adjectives seem to all be verbs, whether by their own virtue or because they have the verb 하다 (hada) attached to them. I suppose Classical Japanese had forms somewhat similar to the latter with its nari (modern na-adjectives) and tari (modern to-adverbs) adjectives, as well as the kari forms of ku and shiku adjectives (modern i-adjectives), which all conjugated like ra-hen verbs (because they all came from some combination of nouns [even i-adjectives were once but humble nouns before they had shi added to them!], particles and the verb あり [ari], modern ある [aru]: ～にあり [ni ari] -> ～なり [nari], ～とあり [to ari] -> ～たり [tari], ～くあり [ku ari] -> ～かり [kari]).

I’m very intrigued by the use of ㅅ to combine nouns in Korean. I don’t know if there’s an etymological reason for this, or if it’s just a mysterious quirk, but it’s definitely different. Only thing close to this in Japanese is rendaku, but it doesn’t exactly add a sound. Just changes it.

I think that’s about it for fun comparisons.

As for what it’s like learning Korean right now, I’m finding it incredibly fun and relatively easy. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to learn it without Japanese to help, but then again, I barely remember ever feeling like Japanese was doing my head in, even when it was, because I was just so fascinated by it. I did get Assimil Le coréen, so I’ve been using that, the Refold KO1k deck, and LingoDeer. The Assimil course and refold deck are by far my favourites. I’ve done 2-3 lessons a day since getting the Assimil course since the first lessons are very simple and I’ve already been at the Refold deck for close to 2 weeks now, so I already know a lot of the basics. Tomorrow will be lesson 8 and I’ll probably slow my pace down in the next few days when the lessons start to have a bit more new content for me. Holy crap, though. The Refold deck is really well made. I have no idea how it would feel for someone with no background in Japanese, or even Chinese, but 10 cards a day feels perfect. It’s like I’m slowly and gently cracking open a geode to reveal the beautiful colours inside. The fact that each card in order teaches exactly one new word or bit of grammar while making use of previously learned words in each new cards makes it a pure joy to use. Not too hard, not too easy. Just right. Highly recommend for complete beginners.

[vonPeterhof]

I was really proud of myself guessing 녹색 (noksaek) because I didn't immediately think of the reading ryokushoku for 緑色, but even then the ry -> n conversion threw me for a loop.

Yeah, I had a similar moment with 졸업 some time ago. Can you figure out that one without looking up?

I also find it fascinating that adjectives seem to all be verbs, whether by their own virtue or because they have the verb 하다 (hada) attached to them. I suppose Classical Japanese had forms somewhat similar to the latter with its nari (modern na-adjectives) and tari (modern to-adverbs) adjectives, as well as the kari forms of ku and shiku adjectives (modern i-adjectives), which all conjugated like ra-hen verbs (because they all came from some combination of nouns [even i-adjectives were once but humble nouns before they had shi added to them!], particles and the verb あり [ari], modern ある [aru]: ～にあり [ni ari] -> ～なり [nari], ～とあり [to ari] -> ～たり [tari], ～くあり [ku ari] -> ～かり [kari]).

I remember wondering for a long time why the na-adjectives were called 形容動詞 when they're more like nouns and, if anything, it's the i-adjectives that are slightly more similar to verbs. Learning about how they worked back in Classical Japanese explained a lot. I guess the Classical-centric terminology isn't as surprising when you're taught Classical Japanese as part of the school program.

[Sizen]

Yeah, I had a similar moment with 졸업 some time ago. Can you figure out that one without looking up?

I had cheat codes for this one because one of the lesson titles in Assimil was 직업. It still took me a minute or two of blankly staring at it to realize I knew haha.

[Sizen]

At this point, I’m mostly working on Korean as it’s the most interesting to me at the moment. I’m trying to make sure other important aspects of my life don’t fall by the wayside either. Work, friends, family, proper diet, sleep, my cat that I got late last year and who I try to play with for at least 45 minutes a day, etc. I’m not finding it easy to fit too much Mandarin in between.

I finished lesson 13 of Assmil today and I’m 180 sentences into Refold KO1K. Still hasn’t felt too challenging. In fact, Assimil is mostly trailing behind the Refold deck in terms of new material, so I’m often only learning a few new words in context. Assimil has gotten slightly more in depth with negation, however. Very interesting to see that the placement of 안 (an) "not" differs whether a word conjugated with 하다 (hada) is a verb or an adjective. They seem like they would belong to the exact same part of speech, but I suppose not. Logically, this makes sense considering they likely act differently in other cases as well. I imagine that 하다 adjectives can’t take an object marked by 을/를 (eul/reul), for example, which would also further distance them from 하다 (hada) verbs. I may be wrong, though.

There have been plenty of new words that once again have been pretty easy because of Japanese. 도착 (dochak) because of Japanese 到着 (touchaku), 출발 (chulbal) because of Japanese 出発 (shuppatsu)*, 청소 (cheongso) from Japanese 清掃 (seisou) with some help from the Mandarin reading qīngsǎo, and even 피곤 (pigon) which isn’t a word in Japanese, but made sense with the characters 疲困 which would be hikon.

*I’ll admit this one doesn’t look similar, but I’ve know since before starting my Korean studies in earnest that a syllable final ㄹ (l/r) is equivalent to a つ (tsu) or ち (chi) in Japanese. I should really look into what the common ancestor of both these sounds was... I could see it being an unvoiced alveolar stop, since the place of articulation is similar for both, and I don’t recall anything about liquid finals in older or more conservative Chinese languages.

Verbs aren’t as intimidating as I thought they might be. Although the way they’re present in the Refold KO1K deck definitely helps. I was able to intuit rules like roots ending in ㅂ(p) becoming ㅜ (u) with words like 어렵다 (eoryeopda) and 춥다 (chupda) conjugating to 어려워 (eoryawo) and어려운 (eoryeoun) or 추워 (chuwo) and 추운 (chuun) or the rule of roots ending in ㅡ (eu) becoming ㅓ (eo) with words like 예쁘다 (yeppuda) becoming 예뻐 (yeppeo).

I’m interested in all the words used to list nouns or express the concept of “with” in Korean. 하고 (hago), 와/과 (wa/gwa), 랑/이랑 (rand/irang). I suppose it’s not completely crazy that there would be so many since Japanese has と (to), とか (toka), and や (ya) but they aren’t completely interchangeable. In fact the latter two can’t be used to mean “with”. So far the three Korean words seem pretty interchangeable, but I’m sure I’ll soon find what the differences are eventually.

There has been another incident of Korean particles not matching with Japanese ones: 저는 어제 아빠가 됐어요 (janeun eoje appaga dwaesseoyo) “I became a dad yesterday.” The Japanese part of my brain wants the 가 (ga) after 아빠 (appa) to be 에 (e) or something more like a dative, definitely not the subject marker.

Then again, the subject marker, as it’s so called, can mark the object in Japanese like in a sentence like ミドリに論文が書けるだろうか (midori ni ronbun ga kakeru darou ka) “I wonder whether Midori can write a thesis” or 誰にそんな大金が必要か？ (dare ni sonna taikin ga hitsuyou ka?) “Who needs that much money?” These sentences both mark the object of the sentence with the “subject” marker.

And this isn’t because I’m applying English logic to Japanese. This is verifiable through two methods: the 自分 (jibun) test and the honorific test. In Japanese, 自分 (jibun) “(one)self” always refers back to the subject of the sentence and subject honorifics (like conjugating the verb as お～になる (o~ni naru) can only be used when the grammatical subject of the sentence permits it. So a sentence like 筧先生に英語がよくお分かりになる (Kakehi sensehi ni eigo ga yoku owakari ni naru) “Professor Kakehi understands English well” shows that Professor Kakehi is the grammatical subject of the sentence despite being marked with the dative particle に (ni), because we know that 英語 (eigo) “English”, which is supposedly marked by the subject marked, is not a valid* choice for this honorific and yet the sentence would require honorifics.

*A sentence like 英語がお難しい (eigo ga omuzukasii) “English is hard” doesn’t really work.

The 自分 test gives a similar result: 太郎に花子が自分の妹よりよくわかる (tarou ni hanako ga jibun no imouto yori yoku wakaru) “Taro understands Hanako better than his own sister.” This once again shows that Tarou is the subject of the sentence despite being marked by the dative particle に (ni) because 自分 refers back to the subject, Tarou, and not the object, Hanako, even though the latter is the one marked by the “subject” marker.

There are even interesting cases where you get two が (ga) in one sentence because one is acting as the subject and the other is acting as the object marker: 太郎が花子が好きだ (tarou ga hanako ga suki da) “It is Tarou who likes Hanako.”

(All of the above Japanese example sentences come from section 11.3 of Shibatani Masayoshi’s The languages of Japan, which I got to read parts of in my Japanese linguistics classes at university.)

All this to say, I guess Korean has similar constructions where the particle 이/가 (i/ga) can be used to mark something other than the grammatical subject of the sentence.

It’s once again interesting to see that 고 (go) ending in the word 그리고 (geurigo), which seems similar to the て (te) ending in そして (soshite). I don’t yet know where the 그리 (guri) part comes from, however, since in Japanese そして (soshite) comes from そうする (sousuru) “[one/it] does as such and...”. If it’s anything like Japanese, there would be a word 그리다 (geurida) that would mean something similar. I guess the 그 (geu) there does bear a resemblance to the demonstrative그 (geu) “that”, which would make sense.

Aspiration is an interesting mess. ㅈ (j) is definitely aspirated from what I can tell, which makes it a bit harder for me to distinguish from ㅊ (ch) at the beginning of a word. In the middle of a word, ㅊ (ch) feels like it has a sort of build up to it that ㅈ (j) doesn’t, making it a lot easier to distinguish to my anglophone brain.

There’s probably more that I’m not remembering to remark on, but this is pretty good. I’m not opposed to anyone adding any insight to any of my comments. I definitely don’t know much about Korean at this point and I’m glutton for miscellaneous facts.

[vonPeterhof]

Then again, the subject marker, as it’s so called, can mark the object in Japanese like in a sentence like ミドリに論文が書けるだろうか (midori ni ronbun ga kakeru darou ka) “I wonder whether Midori can write a thesis” or 誰にそんな大金が必要か？ (dare ni sonna taikin ga hitsuyou ka?) “Who needs that much money?” These sentences both mark the object of the sentence with the “subject” marker.

And this isn’t because I’m applying English logic to Japanese. This is verifiable through two methods: the 自分 (jibun) test and the honorific test. In Japanese, 自分 (jibun) “(one)self” always refers back to the subject of the sentence and subject honorifics (like conjugating the verb as お～になる (o~ni naru) can only be used when the grammatical subject of the sentence permits it. So a sentence like 筧先生に英語がよくお分かりになる (Kakehi sensehi ni eigo ga yoku owakari ni naru) “Professor Kakehi understands English well” shows that Professor Kakehi is the grammatical subject of the sentence despite being marked with the dative particle に (ni), because we know that 英語 (eigo) “English”, which is supposedly marked by the subject marked, is not a valid* choice for this honorific and yet the sentence would require honorifics.

*A sentence like 英語がお難しい (eigo ga omuzukasii) “English is hard” doesn’t really work.

The 自分 test gives a similar result: 太郎に花子が自分の妹よりよくわかる (tarou ni hanako ga jibun no imouto yori yoku wakaru) “Taro understands Hanako better than his own sister.” This once again shows that Tarou is the subject of the sentence despite being marked by the dative particle に (ni) because 自分 refers back to the subject, Tarou, and not the object, Hanako, even though the latter is the one marked by the “subject” marker.

There are even interesting cases where you get two が (ga) in one sentence because one is acting as the subject and the other is acting as the object marker: 太郎が花子が好きだ (tarou ga hanako ga suki da) “It is Tarou who likes Hanako.”

(All of the above Japanese example sentences come from section 11.3 of Shibatani Masayoshi’s The languages of Japan, which I got to read parts of in my Japanese linguistics classes at university.)

This is very interesting, never even occurred to me to think of が in these cases as anything other than a subject. I do wonder how long ago this analysis would still apply, and whether or not it's a stage in an ongoing paradigm shift, the same one that results in the much maligned use of を with both 好き and 分かる (although I do notice that specifically the structure XXを好きになる seems to be more tolerated nowadays). Or maybe this isn't a development of the subject use of が but something that developed in parallel with it from the Old Japanese use of が as a genitive particle.

This sort of reminded me of the shock I felt going from Biblical to Modern Hebrew, which still uses יש ל (roughly "there is at") as the default structure marking possession, but for definite nouns it also obligatorily adds the direct object marker, resulting in sentences like יש לי את הספר which reads like 私に本をある to my brain (especially since my native Russian also uses the "(there is) at me" possessive structure). This feels like transposing the paradigm of the verb "to have" onto יש most likely under the influence of the first languages of the first generation to revive Hebrew, like Yiddish, Polish, Judeo-Spanish and others. Of course it's a bit harder to argue that the subject-object realignment in Japanese is happening under direct influence from English, even if that's what it looks like.

Aspiration is an interesting mess. ㅈ (j) is definitely aspirated from what I can tell, which makes it a bit harder for me to distinguish from ㅊ (ch) at the beginning of a word. In the middle of a word, ㅊ (ch) feels like it has a sort of build up to it that ㅈ (j) doesn’t, making it a lot easier to distinguish to my anglophone brain.

Speaking of paradigm shifts, it seems like in modern standard (South) Korean the distinction between plain (ㅈ), aspirated (ㅊ) and tense (ㅉ) word-initially has become less about the presence or lack of aspiration and tenseness, but more about a combination of aspiration and the pitch of the following vowel, with the plain consonants having light aspiration, but also giving the following vowel a lower pitch. Basically ㅈ=aspirated, low pitch; ㅊ=aspirated, high pitch; ㅉ=unaspirated, high pitch.

[Sizen]

This is very interesting, never even occurred to me to think of が in these cases as anything other than a subject. I do wonder how long ago this analysis would still apply, and whether or not it's a stage in an ongoing paradigm shift, the same one that results in the much maligned use of を with both 好き and 分かる (although I do notice that specifically the structure XXを好きになる seems to be more tolerated nowadays). Or maybe this isn't a development of the subject use of が but something that developed in parallel with it from the Old Japanese use of が as a genitive particle.

XXを好きになる definitely seems like the standard now, but it still always kind of catches me by surprise when I see ～を好きだ. I get it, but my brain feels better about there being a proper verb, even an intransitive one haha. I unfortunately don't have any information about the timeline of this shift, though.

Speaking of paradigm shifts, it seems like in modern standard (South) Korean the distinction between plain (ㅈ), aspirated (ㅊ) and tense (ㅉ) word-initially has become less about the presence or lack of aspiration and tenseness, but more about a combination of aspiration and the pitch of the following vowel, with the plain consonants having light aspiration, but also giving the following vowel a lower pitch. Basically ㅈ=aspirated, low pitch; ㅊ=aspirated, high pitch; ㅉ=unaspirated, high pitch.

Now this is interesting. Do you know if this is the case for all consonants with the 3 way distinction? Heck, do ㅅ and ㅆ differ in pitch as well? I remember learning 토요일 in both Assimil and the KO1K deck recently and it felt to me like ㅌ didn't sound more aspirated than ㄷ. It also had a very atamadaka pitch pattern for lack of a better word. I just don't know if this is my brain making things up while it tries to wrap itself around these sounds or if I was on to something.

[vonPeterhof]

Do you know if this is the case for all consonants with the 3 way distinction? Heck, do ㅅ and ㅆ differ in pitch as well?

Yes, it's definitely like that for all 3 way contrasts. ㅅ is a weird one though, in that it apparently has high pitch, but unlike normal aspirated consonants it seems to have either much weaker or non-existent aspiration word-internally. Wikipedia also mentions the possibility of it being voiced intervocalically, like plain consonants and ㅎ, but I don't think I've personally ever heard this. The closest thing to [z] I remember hearing in Korean is the Pyongyang pronunciation of ㅈ.

[Sizen]

Do you know if this is the case for all consonants with the 3 way distinction? Heck, do ㅅ and ㅆ differ in pitch as well?

ㅅ is a weird one though, in that it apparently has high pitch, but unlike normal aspirated consonants it seems to have either much weaker or non-existent aspiration word-internally. Wikipedia also mentions the possibility of it being voiced intervocalically, like plain consonants and ㅎ, but I don't think I've personally ever heard this. The closest thing to [z] I remember hearing in Korean is the Pyongyang pronunciation of ㅈ.

Funny you should say this. I just read through lesson 14 of my Assimil course, and in the example "dialogue" (it's actually just a bunch of unrelated sentences so far), one of the speakers says 옷을 사요 and I had to do a double take, because I very clearly heard a [z]. I've listened to it a number of times now and I don't think I'm tricking myself because the ㅅ in 옷을 is quite distinct from the one in 사요. I could PM you a link to the sentence's file if you'd like to hear for yourself.

[Sizen]

230 cards into the KO1K deck and 18 lessons into Assimil le coréen, which puts me probably somewhere around 250 words total. It’s starting to feel like I’ll actually have a really good base in Korean once I’m done both.

Some days I take quite a bit of time to get through all my cards. Today’s average time spent per card was 23.43 seconds. I often listen to the audio multiple times, making sure I can make out the sentence in its entirety and not just the vocab or grammar it’s focusing on.

Assimil is a similar situation. I find myself settling into a bit of a routine of listening to the audio multiple times before looking at the lesson. After a few listens, I can usually piece together the individual parts of each sentence, although I often can’t guess the meaning of every word. An example of this today was with the sentence 이번 주 금요일에 종루 극장 앞에서 봐요 (iban ju geumyoile Jongno geukjang apeseo bwayo) “Let’s meet in front of Jongno theatre this Friday.” I was able to piece together all the sounds, but couldn’t quite put together the meaning. That I didn’t get 이번 주, I’ll accept. But I’m a little surprised I didn’t get 금요일 (geumyoil, Japanese 金曜日 kin’youbi) or 극장 (geukjang, Japanese 劇場 gekijou). I basically face palmed when I saw what they meant. Oh well, at least now they’re burnt into my mind.

It’s interesting to see that Korean has a future tense (ㄹ 거에요) as Japanese doesn't. It looks to me almost like you take the verb and conjugate it to a nominalized form marked for the accusative and follow it up with a verb, but I have no idea where the form actually comes from. On the other hand, Korean doesn’t seem to have a polite volitional form like Japanese does (ましょう). You just conjugate the verb to the polite present tense. I’m not even sure if statements and invitations have different intonation.

Listening carefully after the previous discussion here, I’m starting to hear Korean completely differently. I could hear before that the pitch contour of a sentence would go up and down, but I hadn’t put my finger on any meaningful reason for these changes. Now it seems so much clearer. Words starting with certain consonants (ㅃ, ㅍ, ㄸ, ㅌ, ㅅ, ㅆ, ㅉ, ㅊ, ㄲ, ㅎ) have high pitch, and all other words have low pitch. This REALLY jumped out at me. Words like 항상 and 꽤 really made this obvious because the high pitch seems to often be exaggerated for emphasis, much like you can raise the pitch before the accent in Japanese for emphasis.

When pronounced in isolation, the high pitch words seems to start high and drop off eventually, but I’m not 100% sure. The low words also seem to go up on the second syllable.

Korean vowels are wild. ㅘ and ㅝ can sound so close sometimes. Same with ㅗ/ㅛ and ㅜ/ㅠ. I’m wondering if ㅗ becomes raised in some situations and if ㅘ is retracted or something. Or maybe my hearing is just off.

There was also an insane pronunciation of 교회 (gyohui) in one of my lessons. It honestly sounded like [kye]. Luckily, there was another speaker saying it closer to how I expected it to be pronounced, but I don’t know what to think about the other one. Was it a mistake? A dialectal difference? A modern pronunciation that isn’t reflected in writing?

I also love the particles. It’s so interesting that 에서 (eseo) marks the location where the action happens OR the starting location. Japanese has two different particles for this で (de) and から (kara). Interestingly, で (de) can also be used to mark how an action is completed (with a tool, for example). In Classical Japanese, から (kara) could also be used to indicate the means, like in this sentence 徒歩(かち)からまかる (kachi kara makaru) “to go by foot,” for example. It’s interesting to see the overlap. 에서 (eseo) marks location, で (de) marks location and also the means, から (kara) marks the means and also point of origin, 에서 (eseo) marks point of origin.


Another interesting parallel is that 에서 (eseo) seems to be made up of two parts: the direction/location marker 에 (e) plus 서 (seo) (which I don’t really know if it’s its own thing yet). This is interesting because the Japanese particle で (de) is also technically made up of two parts: に (ni) and て (te). In Classical Japanese the particle に (ni) was used for both the direction and the location where an action takes place. にて (nite), which just adds on the conjunctive particle て (te), was used for the location where an action takes place, but not the direction. It eventually merged into で and now に and で are used differently for the most part.

It’s like there’s a weird particle continuum of form and meaning between Japanese and Korean.

That’s about it. Loving Korean at the moment.