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Vagabundo
Joined: 26 Aug 2010
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 Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 7:32 am Post subject: |
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thinking about this even more broadly , I'm curious how the Romanization of some Asian cities came about.
Peking, vs Beijing..
Bombay vs Mumbai.
those are completely different words and sounds!!! |
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machoman
Joined: 11 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:19 am Post subject: |
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| Vagabundo wrote: |
thinking about this even more broadly , I'm curious how the Romanization of some Asian cities came about.
Peking, vs Beijing..
Bombay vs Mumbai.
those are completely different words and sounds!!! |
peking and beijing are different because there were two different systems of romanization used. the first romaization system for chinese was created sometime in the 19th century i believe, and i forget why it was the way it was but later, pinyin was developed and is now the official romanization used by china.
like the beer, tsingtao is not at all pronounced phonetically that way.
one thing i'd like to point out is that the romanization of chinese is so much easier and accurate to follow and much more consistent than the romanization of korean. |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:39 am Post subject: |
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| Vagabundo wrote: |
| redaxe wrote: |
It's not about "L" versus "R" though. Don't think about it in terms of English or any European language. Lee and Rhee are pronounced exactly the same in North Korea: 리 (and in South Korea they are both 이). It doesn't make any difference whether you romanize ㄹ as an "L" or an "R" because it's neither. It's ㄹ.
But the thing is, ㄹ also has two different sounds in Korean. The ㄹ in 라면 ("r" in "ramyeon") is different from the ㄹ in 알 ("l" in "al"/"egg"). Again it has nothing to do with R versus L, it's just a Korean pronunciation rule, ㄹ sounds differently depending on whether it's at the beginning, middle, or end of a word.
Anyway, the important part was that "Lee" is a historical throwback because the Korean surname "Lee" used to actually be pronounced "Lee" and not just "ee." And in North Korea, it still is.
It can be spelled Lee, Rhee, Li, Yi, I, in different Romanization systems, but in Korean it's all the same name. |
very good, thanks.
how do you pronounce ㄹ then?
simply as either an R or an L, depending on its place in the word?
or some unintelligible mixture of the two?
far as i'm concerned, they're distinct sounds.. the L forces the tongue to touch upper palate.. in the R, the tongue is vibrated (and curled). It can NOT be the same sound/letter.
would a similar rule hold with g and k.. then? depending on its placement in the word, it'll be pronounced either g or k?
p.s. btw. this is tremendously interesting and helpful. If I had a teacher who could explain things like this to me, it would make learning Korean a far more achievable and interesting activity for me. |
Yeah, Korean does tend to change the pronunciation of consonants depending on where they are in the word.
When ㄹ is at the beginning or in the middle of a word, it is what linguists call a "flap," which is exactly what you meant when you said "the L forces the tongue to touch upper palate." Like when Koreans say "ala" ("I know").
But when ㄹ is at the end of a word, or there are two ㄹ's together in the middle of a word, it becomes a retroflex sound, which means the tongue is curled backward, like you said. Like in "al" ("egg") or "hallasan" (Mt. Halla).
G/K, P/B and T/D (ㄱ,ㅂ,ㄷ) are a similar issue. They are unvoiced when at the beginning of a word but voiced when in the middle of a word, and they are unaspirated, unvoiced stops when at the end of a word.
It's why 바보 ("babo"/"fool") kind of sounds like "pabo" when Koreans say it. The first ㅂ is unvoiced, the second one is voiced. |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:49 am Post subject: |
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| machoman wrote: |
| Vagabundo wrote: |
thinking about this even more broadly , I'm curious how the Romanization of some Asian cities came about.
Peking, vs Beijing..
Bombay vs Mumbai.
those are completely different words and sounds!!! |
peking and beijing are different because there were two different systems of romanization used. the first romaization system for chinese was created sometime in the 19th century i believe, and i forget why it was the way it was but later, pinyin was developed and is now the official romanization used by china.
like the beer, tsingtao is not at all pronounced phonetically that way.
one thing i'd like to point out is that the romanization of chinese is so much easier and accurate to follow and much more consistent than the romanization of korean. |
Peking / Beijing is also due to a sound change. The consonants in Chinese have changed a lot over the past few hundred years. It used to actually be pronounced with that "k" in there but the "k" sound changed to a "j" sound over time in Mandarin. "Beijing" reflects the modern Mandarin pronunciation of the city's name.
Korean (and Southern Chinese dialects like Cantonese) preserve the "k" sound though. It's still "Bukgyeong" in Korean and "Bukging" in Cantonese.
Same goes for Nanking/Nanjing and Chungking/Chongqing.
As for "Bombay" there's some interesting info on Wikipedia:
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Ali Muhammad Khan, in the Mirat-i-Ahmedi (1507) referred to the city as Manbai.[15] In 1508, Portuguese writer Gaspar Correia used the name Bombaim, in his Lendas da �ndia ("Legends of India").[16][17] This name possibly originated as the Old Portuguese phrase bom baim, meaning "good little bay",[18] and Bombaim is still commonly used in Portuguese.[19] In 1516, Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa used the name Tana-Maiambu: Tana appears to refer to the adjoining town of Thane and Maiambu to Mumbadevi.[20]
The temple of local Hindu goddess Mumbadevi, after whom the city of Mumbai derives its name.Other variations recorded in the 16th and the 17th centuries include: Mombayn (1525), Bombay (1538), Bombain (1552), Bombaym (1552), Monbaym (1554), Mombaim (1563), Mombaym (1644), Bambaye (1666), Bombaiim (1666), Bombeye (1676), and Boon Bay (1690).[19][21] After the British gained possession of the city in the 17th century, the Portuguese name was officially anglicised as Bombay
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 9:57 am Post subject: |
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| machoman wrote: |
| Vagabundo wrote: |
thinking about this even more broadly , I'm curious how the Romanization of some Asian cities came about.
Peking, vs Beijing..
Bombay vs Mumbai.
those are completely different words and sounds!!! |
peking and beijing are different because there were two different systems of romanization used. the first romaization system for chinese was created sometime in the 19th century i believe, and i forget why it was the way it was but later, pinyin was developed and is now the official romanization used by china.
like the beer, tsingtao is not at all pronounced phonetically that way.
one thing i'd like to point out is that the romanization of chinese is so much easier and accurate to follow and much more consistent than the romanization of korean. |
Except for the fact that Taiwan still uses the old romanization system for political reasons (they don't want to use a system that was developed by Communists). So it's still kind of confusing. And then Taiwan tried to introduce another new pinyin system, which really sucks. They should just use the same pinyin that the mainland uses.
At least Mainland China picked a romanization system and stuck with it. |
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Vagabundo
Joined: 26 Aug 2010
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| Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 2:41 am Post subject: |
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fascinating stuff.
redaxe, if you don't kind, more questions 
so the curled tongue one in Halla-san or,, al..
when we curl our tongue and vibrate the tongue a little, that's our "R".
are you saying this then becomes our "r", or is it some new sound which we simply do not know how to make.
(because I can't make an l sound by curling my tongue)
I'm also a little confused by when you refer to something being "unvoiced".
I even have difficulty with "aspiration", though I've encountered this in Latin American countries, where they like to aspirate their s's at the end of the word, or indeed swallow them whole, but I have difficulty replicating this. |
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Slowmotion
Joined: 15 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 4:53 am Post subject: |
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| redaxe wrote: |
| Vagabundo wrote: |
| redaxe wrote: |
It's not about "L" versus "R" though. Don't think about it in terms of English or any European language. Lee and Rhee are pronounced exactly the same in North Korea: 리 (and in South Korea they are both 이). It doesn't make any difference whether you romanize ㄹ as an "L" or an "R" because it's neither. It's ㄹ.
But the thing is, ㄹ also has two different sounds in Korean. The ㄹ in 라면 ("r" in "ramyeon") is different from the ㄹ in 알 ("l" in "al"/"egg"). Again it has nothing to do with R versus L, it's just a Korean pronunciation rule, ㄹ sounds differently depending on whether it's at the beginning, middle, or end of a word.
Anyway, the important part was that "Lee" is a historical throwback because the Korean surname "Lee" used to actually be pronounced "Lee" and not just "ee." And in North Korea, it still is.
It can be spelled Lee, Rhee, Li, Yi, I, in different Romanization systems, but in Korean it's all the same name. |
very good, thanks.
how do you pronounce ㄹ then?
simply as either an R or an L, depending on its place in the word?
or some unintelligible mixture of the two?
far as i'm concerned, they're distinct sounds.. the L forces the tongue to touch upper palate.. in the R, the tongue is vibrated (and curled). It can NOT be the same sound/letter.
would a similar rule hold with g and k.. then? depending on its placement in the word, it'll be pronounced either g or k?
p.s. btw. this is tremendously interesting and helpful. If I had a teacher who could explain things like this to me, it would make learning Korean a far more achievable and interesting activity for me. |
Yeah, Korean does tend to change the pronunciation of consonants depending on where they are in the word.
When ㄹ is at the beginning or in the middle of a word, it is what linguists call a "flap," which is exactly what you meant when you said "the L forces the tongue to touch upper palate." Like when Koreans say "ala" ("I know").
But when ㄹ is at the end of a word, or there are two ㄹ's together in the middle of a word, it becomes a retroflex sound, which means the tongue is curled backward, like you said. Like in "al" ("egg") or "hallasan" (Mt. Halla).
G/K, P/B and T/D (ㄱ,ㅂ,ㄷ) are a similar issue. They are unvoiced when at the beginning of a word but voiced when in the middle of a word, and they are unaspirated, unvoiced stops when at the end of a word.
It's why 바보 ("babo"/"fool") kind of sounds like "pabo" when Koreans say it. The first ㅂ is unvoiced, the second one is voiced. |
Does not sound like pabo to me (that would be 파보 since the p is aspirated in English at the beginning) |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 6:29 am Post subject: |
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| Vagabundo wrote: |
fascinating stuff.
redaxe, if you don't kind, more questions
so the curled tongue one in Halla-san or,, al..
when we curl our tongue and vibrate the tongue a little, that's our "R".
are you saying this then becomes our "r", or is it some new sound which we simply do not know how to make.
(because I can't make an l sound by curling my tongue)
I'm also a little confused by when you refer to something being "unvoiced".
I even have difficulty with "aspiration", though I've encountered this in Latin American countries, where they like to aspirate their s's at the end of the word, or indeed swallow them whole, but I have difficulty replicating this. |
for the retroflex ㄹ sound, your tongue should curl back AND the tip of your tongue should be touching the roof of your mouth. Try making an English "L" sound and then sliding your tongue backward along the roof of your mouth.
A voiced consonant means your voicebox vibrates as you're pronouncing it.
An aspirated consonant means a puff of air comes out of your mouth as you're pronouncing it.
And then, Korean also has tensed consonants, ㅃㅉㄸㄲㅆ, which are produced sort of by building up more air pressure behind them. I'm sure there's a better technical explanation for how they are pronounced but I can't really explain it in text. |
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redaxe
Joined: 01 Dec 2008
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| Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 6:31 am Post subject: |
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[quote="Slowmotion"][quote="redaxe"]
| Vagabundo wrote: |
| redaxe wrote: |
It's why 바보 ("babo"/"fool") kind of sounds like "pabo" when Koreans say it. The first ㅂ is unvoiced, the second one is voiced. |
Does not sound like pabo to me (that would be 파보 since the p is aspirated in English at the beginning) |
But the thing is, it doesn't sound like "babo" either. Because in English, both "b"s would be voiced. In Korean, only the second "b" is voiced. The initial ㅂ sound doesn't actually exist in English.
Hence all the confusion over whether to call the city Busan/Pusan etc. |
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Slowmotion
Joined: 15 Aug 2009
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| Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2010 12:18 am Post subject: |
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| I still don't think there's a huge difference from the first ㅂ and the second ㅂ. It's very slight. What I've noticed is girls tend to sound more near a p-ish sound where a guy's sounds more like a b-ish sound. It's like they slightly aspirate it more than guys. Same thing applies for ㄱ, ㅈ, and ㄷ |
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Kwangjuchicken
Joined: 01 Sep 2003
Location: I was abducted by aliens on my way to Korea and forced to be an EFL teacher on this crazy planet.
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| Posted: Thu Nov 04, 2010 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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We do it that way because "THEY" do it that way.
End |
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