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Concept
Korean phonology
Summary
This article is a technical description of the phonetics and phonology of Korean. Unless otherwise noted, statements in this article refer to South Korean standard language based on the Seoul dialect.
Morphophonemes are written inside double slashes (⫽ ⫽), phonemes inside slashes (/ /), and allophones inside brackets ([ ]).
Korean has 19 consonant phonemes.
For each plosive and affricate, there is a three-way contrast between unvoiced segments, which are distinguished as plain, tense, and aspirated.
The "plain" segments, sometimes referred to as "lax" or "lenis," are considered to be the more "basic" or unmarked members of the Korean obstruent series. The "plain" segments are also distinguished from the tense and aspirated phonemes by changes in vowel quality, including a relatively lower pitch of the following vowel.
The "tense" segments, also referred to as "fortis," "hard," or "glottalized," have eluded precise description and have been the subject of considerable phonetic investigation. In the Korean alphabet as well as all widely used romanization systems for Korean, they are represented as doubled plain segments: ᄈ , ᄄ , ᄍ , ᄁ . As it was suggested from the Middle Korean spelling, the tense consonants came from the initial consonant clusters sC-, pC-, psC-.
The "aspirated" segments are characterized by aspiration, a burst of air accompanied by the delayed onset of voicing.
Korean syllable structure is maximally CGVC, where G is a glide /j, w, ɰ/. (There is a unique off-glide diphthong in the character 의 that combines the sounds [ɯ] and [i] creating [ɰ]). Any consonant except /ŋ/ may occur initially, but only /p, t, k, m, n, ŋ, l/ may occur finally. Sequences of two consonants may occur between vowels.
/p, t, tɕ, k/ are voiced [b, d, dʑ, ɡ] between sonorants (including all vowels and certain consonants) but voiceless elsewhere. Among younger generations, they may be just as aspirated as /ph, th, tɕh, kh/ in initial position; the primary difference is that vowels following the plain consonants carry low tone.
Official source
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