Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Fresh Prince]

Any tips, suggestions, or links would be much appreciated.

I've been through Sogang's site but it doesn't really help me that much. Whatever I'm doing it is wrong and unintelligible to most Koreans.

The nearest I can tell, when the sound is at the beginning of a syllable, it is pronounced as "L," and when it is at the end, it is pronounced as "R."
http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/korean/kkl100/lesson01/index.html

[Kyrei]

Pronounce it like this: ㄹ

Seriously though, I have always approached ㄹas somewhere between "l" and "r". Same goes for almost all Korean consonants.

[the_beaver]

However you want. They can't tell the difference.

[cbclark4]

So you pronounce the "L" sound with your you tongue touching the bottom of your front teeth.

The "R" your tongue is at the roof of your mouth.

The Hangul (I don't know how to type Hangul) your tongue is places right about where the roof of your mouth ends and your teeth begin. I think you have to twist your longue just a bit or move it to one side when it is the trailing sound, it takes practice, and it's hard to listen to the difference.

Now of course sometimes it is pronounced as an "N" sound but I don't think your asking about that.

Now who can distinguish the difference between the biyop and sang biyop?

cbc[/b]

[SPINOZA]

Upon consideration of 로데리아 (Lotteria), 바람 (wind), 모르는 사람 (people one does not know) and 팔 (eight), we see that ㄹ has no resemblance whatsoever with the 'r' of English and it is more like an L. Korean books such as Ross King's 'Continuing Korean' mention ㄹ as an L-sound. I've heard Koreans pronounce 'Latin' and 'liar' as 'ratin' and 'riar' (and also 'rice' as 'lice') and this is strange and should be put down to some other reason, since Korean has no r-sound whatsoever.

[Woland]

Korean has a single phoneme, /l/ with two allophones, [l] and flap (for which I don't have the IPA symbol here - an upside down, backwards J), which is commonly designated as [r].

[r] occurs between vowels. [l] occurs in all other positions.

On the surface, this may not appear to be so, but is in fact the case. In words like shin-la, which is pronounced as shilla, it may appear that [l] is occurring between two vowels in pronunciation, but in fact, [l] is occurring before a nasal consonant [n], which is then assimilated to the [l]. Since Korean does not have consonant length, this appears as one [l] between two vowels. Again, underlyingly, this is not the case.

The allophone [l] is produced as a lateral consonant, with the tongue placed against the gum ridge behind the upper teeth (the alveolar ridge).

The allophone flap is produced by tapping the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge and quickly releasing it. in English, a phonetically similar sound is produced as an allophone of the phonemes /t/ and /d/ in certain environments (e.g., in the words 'lateral' and 'ladder'). It is also equivalent to the normal pronunciation of the Russian and Spanish /r/ phonemes. (Spanish also has a trilled 'r').

Another source of difficulty for English speakers with Korean pronunciation is that English has two allophones of the phoneme /l/, so-called light and dark 'l'. Light 'l' is produced as described above, matching the Korean 'l' sound. Dark 'l' is produced by raising the back fo the tongue towards the soft palate (velum) and allowing air to pass along the tongue laterally. In English this variant occurs predictably in final position ('fall'), in final consonant clusters ('fault'), and around back vowels in medial positions ('molehill'). English speakers who produce dark 'l' in equivalent positions in Korean may not be understood as having produced /l/ by Koreans because such an allophonic variant doesn't exist in Korean.

This is probably too technical, but there's no simpler way to describe it. I've read the phonological/phonetic work on this (and teach it as well). The problem is really that phonemes and their predictable allophonic variants overlap, but don't match up between the two languages. It would be much easier for me to explain this to you in person.

EDIT: Forgot about the nasalization of /l/ in initial position in some words (mostly proper names, I believe) and the disappearance and reappearance of it in others. My understanding is that this is a Sino-Korean phenomenon and would have to be dealt with purely lexically (as a property of those particular words) in Korean.

What I say above about the [l]/flap distinction holds true still, though.

[Qinella]

If there are two of the lieuls next to each other or there is one at the end of a word, it probably sounds like L. Otherwise, just flip the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth. It's impossible to directly transliterate that sound into English, but try to think of the way 'water' is often pronounced. The T sound is like the single lieul.

[Fresh Prince]

Wow, those were some great tips.

Thanks to Woland-The dark "L" is something I've been using a lot without realizing it. I'm sure that's the source of my problem although I haven't been using the allophone flap either. That's a great explanation.

[Corporal]

Without getting too technical, it often sounds like a soft D.

[tintinus]

Don't you roll your tounge as you say it? The italians do it and so do many other european countries. It's like rolling your R's or is that someting diffrent?

[Woland]

No, there is no trill in Korean. (Maybe no thrill, either, for some.) The realization of the sound is as a flap. Who knows what Koreans make of someone trilling lieuls here.

Just for the record, the Italian trill is a predictable allophonic variant, occurring when /r/ is geminate; when not geminate, a flap is produced. Spanish trill is phonemic.

[mateomiguel]

luuul

[NAVFC]

[SPINOZA]

It is not an English r though, is it? An English speaker, unaware of the actual pronunciation in Korean, will pronounce arirang differently to a Korean.

The ㄹ sound in 아리랑 is more like an L, although not really like an L either, but it's closer because it's made with the tongue and the roof of the mouth. It may well sound similar to r-sounds in other languages, but it has no resemblance with an English r.

Let's use more examples: 얼음 (ice), 올 여름 (last summer). One makes this sound with the tongue, hence the more defensible comparison with an L.

See mine and others' comments here: http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=55191&highlight=

[NAVFC]