How to Pronounce Korean Names or the Language Itself

[MJK]

I post this thread, that it may help anyone to pronounce Korean pro names or anything else Korean, properly.


I'll do with the vowels, where most people seems to confuse. The IPA pronunciation keys are inside the brackets.

ri. = Romanized in
of. = officially (to indicate the official standard when there are multiple ways of Romanization)
pe. = (similarly) pronounced like the English ...
pr. = (almost exactly) pronounced like the Romance languages' (Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, etc.)

ㅏ[a] ri. "a"
pe. "a" in "father" pr. "a"

ㅐ[æ] ri. "ae, ai, ay" of. "ae"
This is pronounced exactly the same with "ㅔ[e]" in contemporary Korean, but many people think it should be distinguished from "ㅔ[e]", as it appears in romanization and the IPA symbol, although themselves even pronounce them the same.
pe. "a" in "hat" or also "ay" in "Blue Jay"

ㅓ[ʌ] ri. "eo, u, ou" of. "eo"
pe. "u" in "gut"

ㅔ[e] ri. "e"
pe. "e" in "send" pr. "e"

ㅗ[o] ri. "o"
pe. "aw" in "paw" pr. "o"

ㅚ[we] ri. "oe, oi, we" of. "oe"
The old pronunciation is [ø] like the O Umlaut in German.
pe. "we" in "Wendy"

ㅜ ri. "u, oo" of. "u"
pe. "oo" in "moon" pr. "u"

ㅟ[wi] ri. "wi, ui, wee" of. "wi"
The old pronunciation is [y] like the U Umlaut in German or the French U.
pe. "we"

ㅡ[ɨ, ɯ] ri. "eu, u" of. "eu"
Really hard to explain how to pronounce this one, but it could be similar to between the French "e" and "eu", or the English "oo" in "book".

ㅣ ri. "i, ee" of. "i"
same as "y" in "really"


Now... Try to pronounce "Choi Cheolhan"

[billywoods]

pe. = (similarly) pronounced like the English ...

Which dialect of English? The biggest thing that distinguishes the various dialects of English is their large variation in vowels.

[Bonobo]

Now... Try to pronounce "Choi Cheolhan"

Chö Chalhan?

[Bill Spight]

Now... Try to pronounce "Choi Cheolhan"

Chö Chalhan?

Joey Callahan?

[MJK]

pe. = (similarly) pronounced like the English ...

Which dialect of English? The biggest thing that distinguishes the various dialects of English is their large variation in vowels.

Well, should be English from BBC and CNN. I've also written the IPA symbols to remove confusion.

Now... Try to pronounce "Choi Cheolhan"

Chö Chalhan?

Reading(ㅚ[we] ri. "oe, oi, we" of. "oe") like the "ö", I hear only from very old people, occasionally.
It should be pronounced like Chweh Chull-hahn But it's also okay to say it as Choi Chull-hahn, for the same reason why Lee Sedol isn't Yi Sedol.

[DrStraw]

[
Well, should be English from BBC and CNN. I've also written the IPA symbols to remove confusion.

Well, BBC is British English and CNN is American English and ne'er the twain shall meet.

This reminds me that when I first tried to learn Japanese from the Teach Yourself book it said to pronounce O as in November. Well, I spoke a northern dialect of British and so pronounced it that way. Ten years later in Japanese class I had a lot of trouble changing it to the correct pronunciation because I had been saying it one way in my mind for so long. Depending on where you are from the O in November can be pronounced long, short, or as a schwa.

[MJK]

[
Well, should be English from BBC and CNN. I've also written the IPA symbols to remove confusion.

Well, BBC is British English and CNN is American English and ne'er the twain shall meet.

This reminds me that when I first tried to learn Japanese from the Teach Yourself book it said to pronounce O as in November. Well, I spoke a northern dialect of British and so pronounced it that way. Ten years later in Japanese class I had a lot of trouble changing it to the correct pronunciation because I had been saying it one way in my mind for so long. Depending on where you are from the O in November can be pronounced long, short, or as a schwa.

IPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... c_Alphabet

[billywoods]

IPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... c_Alphabet

The meaning of an IPA symbol also varies depending on the dialect. Take a look at the vowel chart here. English vowels are a mess. There is a more precise version too, but most people write the diaphoneme (which you have written), whose meaning varies a lot between dialects and languages.

[DrStraw]

[
Well, should be English from BBC and CNN. I've also written the IPA symbols to remove confusion.

Well, BBC is British English and CNN is American English and ne'er the twain shall meet.

This reminds me that when I first tried to learn Japanese from the Teach Yourself book it said to pronounce O as in November. Well, I spoke a northern dialect of British and so pronounced it that way. Ten years later in Japanese class I had a lot of trouble changing it to the correct pronunciation because I had been saying it one way in my mind for so long. Depending on where you are from the O in November can be pronounced long, short, or as a schwa.

IPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... c_Alphabet

I know the IPA alphabet. I was just pointing out the futility of saying "BBC or CNN". Don't misunderstand me: I appreciate your efforts.

[jts]

IPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... c_Alphabet

The meaning of an IPA symbol also varies depending on the dialect. Take a look at the vowel chart here. English vowels are a mess. There is a more precise version too, but most people write the diaphoneme (which you have written), whose meaning varies a lot between dialects and languages.

IPA represents the same word differently for different dialects of English, but it always uses the same symbol for the same sound. Regardless of how recondite your accent is, you should be able to figure out the meaning of the vowel system.

I am curious to know, though, in which dialect "hat" and "blue jay" share the [æ] pronunciation... Australian, maybe?

[MJK]

IPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internati ... c_Alphabet

The meaning of an IPA symbol also varies depending on the dialect. Take a look at the vowel chart here. English vowels are a mess. There is a more precise version too, but most people write the diaphoneme (which you have written), whose meaning varies a lot between dialects and languages.

IPA represents the same word differently for different dialects of English, but it always uses the same symbol for the same sound. Regardless of how recondite your accent is, you should be able to figure out the meaning of the vowel system.

I am curious to know, though, in which dialect "hat" and "blue jay" share the [æ] pronunciation... Australian, maybe?

Well, I wanted to say that most English speakers can't pronounce [æ] in the end of the word. For example, in "Hyundai" where it should be [hjʌn dæ] I've always heard it as [hjʌn dei] in English. The same goes to [e]

[MJK]

I was just pointing out the futility of saying "BBC or CNN".

The vowels listed with "pe." should be pronounced the same in BBC and CNN, which I meant to refer to Recieved Pronunciation and General American, according to my English dictionaries. But perhaps it doesn't go well for the practice.

[billywoods]

IPA represents the same word differently for different dialects of English, but it always uses the same symbol for the same sound.

The IPA is just a set of characters. People use these characters in very different ways.

The "tl;dr" version of what I'm about to say is: in most IPA usage, my /ɔː/ is not your /ɔː/, even though they are written with the same symbols.

The issue is basically one of broad vs. narrow transcription.

A "narrow" transcription is a highly precise transcription of the individual phones that make up an individual utterance of a word, so accounts for dialect (allophones and so on). This can be done in the IPA, of course. The downside is that it involves many thousands of symbols adorned with squiggles and dots and diacritics, and if a British English speaker transcribed a sentence narrowly, it may be very hard to read for an American speaker, for instance. So it's very rare to see this done. You will sometimes find this in linguistics texts that discuss or compare the phonologies of particular, individual dialects of a language, but otherwise it sees very little usage.

A "broad" transcription is one that deliberately doesn't take dialect into account: it involves a much smaller number of placeholder symbols, which confusingly are also written in the IPA. These placeholder symbols represent diaphonemes: collections of phones/phonemes that are, at least hopefully and for 'standard' dialects, the same modulo allophones. (That is, if every English speaker agrees that "got" and "hot" share the same vowel, then even if that vowel varies dramatically across dialects, we might as well write it with a generic "o" symbol, and let individual speakers understand what it means. This means that how I transcribe a word will be basically the same as how you transcribe a word, but the symbols mean different sounds to us both.) These are the phonetic transcriptions you see in dictionaries, for instance, so that they can be used by speakers of different dialects.

Have a look at the vowel chart I linked to. The diaphonemes on the left are the characters that broad transcriptions (including the OP's transcriptions) are written in, and these are the characters that many dictionaries use. Notice that the actual phonemes they correspond to - the rest of the table - vary hugely. (What on earth is ø̞̈? I've no idea. Edit: it seems it's such an esoteric character that it doesn't even render on L19. ) Of course, there are probably comparable charts for Korean too, but who knows how much they overlap?

[jts]

Assuming all dialects of English used the same vowel in "got" that they use in "hot" doesn't imply that all dialects of English should use one IPA symbol for that vowel, it implies that each dialect should use the same symbol for got that it uses for hot.

For example, perhaps I will use [ɑ] and the Welsh will use [ɒ] but [ɑ] and [ɒ] should be vowel-sounds that we can compare across dialects and indeed across languages.

(The main purpose of IPA is to represent foreign pronunciations in a way that doesn't depend on orthography/romanization, so I can't imagine what use IPA would have if the symbols were meant to be different for everyone. The use of extended symbol sets to represent speech defects and the smallest measurable differences in phonetic value are only of technical interest to linguists and speech pathologists...)

[billywoods]

Assuming all dialects of English used the same vowel in "got" that they use in "hot" doesn't imply that all dialects of English should use one IPA symbol for that vowel

"Should"? No. But they do.

I can't imagine what use IPA would have if the symbols were meant to be different for everyone

I gave you one. Pronunciation guides in dictionaries. It is no use whatsoever if you publish a dictionary in east London and people in south London, or Liverpool, or New York, can't use its pronunciation guide. But they can, because pronunciation in dictionaries is transcribed phonemically, not phonetically. Did you read what I said?