Look at this word if you please:
라디오
Gibberish right? To the western eye this will no doubt make little to absolutely no sense. To my geeky eye it looks like some kind of alien language passed down to us from the stars centuries ago. Or, to the grounded in reality, it will appear like characters in the Hangeul alphabet. I happen to like my interpretation better but that's besides the point. Let's analyze this puppy.
First the mechanics: The Korean language does have single letters and those letters are compacted in order to produce syllables. What you are looking at is six different letters put together to form three different syllables. The way the syllables go is consonant-vowel. Sometimes it can go consonant-vowel-consonant but that's the max. Three letters at the most will form a syllable. So for this lesson we're doing a very easy one with just two letters, consonant-vowel, forming each syllable. So look at it again:
라디오
What are the letters then? The vowels each have a specific sound that they make while the consonants can play double duty. They can be different letters in the western alphabet depending on their position in the word itself but both the letters come from the same place your tongue hitting the roof of your mouth can produce. Hence, this is a very phonetic language with emphasis on how the sound is produced in your mouth. For example, the first syllable is:
라
The first character is a consonant as we know and the second is a vowel. The consonant is an R (or can sometimes also be an L) and the vowel is A, pronounced like "Ah." Therefore 라 is pronounced R-Ah. Now the second one:
디
The consonant is a D sound (or can sometimes be pronounced as a T, notice how your tongue is in the exact same position on your mouth for either letter?) and the vowel is an I sound that is really pronounced like EE. So 디 is pronounced D-EE. Now the third and trickiest syllable:
오
This gets a little weird so stay with me. The circle on the top of the stem is called the vowel consonant. As I said, the formula for each syllable has to be consonant-vowel so if the beginning sound of a syllable is going to be a vowel, which it is in this case, and there are no more consonants to place in the syllable before it, then they created a fascinating thing called the vowel consonant which is nothing more than a placeholder for the vowel, standing in the place of the consonant, and making no sound whatsoever. There are two letters in this syllable but only one of them makes any sound. Weird huh? Now to compound this that circular vowel consonant DOES make an Ng sound if it is at the END of a syllable, but since it is in the beginning it is voiceless like the k in the beginning of knife or knight. So with the first consonant silent the only sound left is the vowel (which is an O) and sounds like OH. Therefore 오 sounds like OH.
Review:
라 = R-AH
디 = D-EE
오 = OH
Can you see it now?
라디오
R-Ah-D-Ee-Oh
Radio
Fascinating shit right? Of course not everything is as literal, mainly only things that came from other countries still have their own words broken into Hangeul. The alphabet was created in 1444 during the reign of King Sejong in the beginning of an era known as the Joseon Dynasty, which lasted from 1392 to 1910! Before introducing the alphabet the only people who were literate were leaders and members of the elite class and even they had to use complex Chinese characters. King Sejong presided over the simplifying of the alphabet into 28 characters and the actual title of the alphabet literally translated into "the correct sounds for the instruction of the people." The modern classification of Hangeul was coined by Korean linguist Ju Si-gyeong in the late 1880's.
This has been another installment of Fascinating Shit. Go on and copy this word down and impress your friends. More to come as my Korean lessons continue of course.
As always, stay classy San Diego!
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