THE KOREAN INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH 1

The Korean Influence on English

Yvonne Boeskool

Calvin College
THE KOREAN INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH 2

Abstract

In this study, I will be evaluating one native Korean speakers phonetics patterns in her mother

tongue and how these patterns influence her speaking of my native language of English. I will

use a recording and my transcriptions of this recording to pick apart the consonants, vowels,

diphthongs, and other various characteristics of the Korean language and use them to analyze

their effects on the subjects English phonology. I do not have any experience with Korean, so

this paper will be written from an almost completely English perspective and ear. Through my

studies, I have concluded that the Korean has many different sounds and syntax patterns than that

of English and they do, in fact, have a large impact on the speaking of English as they would any

language learned later. Comparing two languages in this way opens ones eyes to the various

characteristics of their own language they have put little, if any, thought into.
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For my study of a foreign language speaker, I chose Sarah who speaks Korean as her first

language and English as her second. Sarah grew up in Buyeo, South Korea and moved to

Michigan around two years ago as a part of a foreign exchange program and then decided to stay

in Michigan for college. She grew up speaking the Chungcheong dialect of Korean, native to her

area, while the Seoul dialect is known as standard in South Korea (Korea, 2016). She then

began learning American English in middle school and continued in high school where her

English teacher introduced her to the exchange program to better improve her English.

For this study, I recorded the subject completing various vocal tasks on November 14,

2016. I first had a little conversation with her about her transition from Korea to Michigan and

learning English as a second language. I then had her translate ten words I selected from English

to Korean followed by introducing and elaborating about herself to me freely in Korean. Lastly,

I had the subject read the Rainbow Passage in English. I noticed that her English does sound

slightly more Americanized when she is reading compared to when she was having a casual

conversation with me, so I will consider that as I continue to give my research results in this

paper. When I asked Sarah about the differences between Korean and English, she indicated that

the main difference was in the vowels: that the some of the vowels in Korean are very unique

and English does not include them. As I did further research, I learned that the same is true in

reverse. There are several English vowels, as well as diphthongs, that are not included in

Korean. I definitely saw evidence of these differences in both her Korean and English speaking

samples. If you listen to the end of the recording, you will hear that I also asked her what

sound(s) she had trouble with when she was first learning English. She explained that it was

always difficult for her to pronounce the English // and /l/ sounds when theyre put together like

in the word early, but she pointed out that she is getting better at this.
THE KOREAN INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH 4

The Korean language, also called Hangul, has various theories of origin and no concrete

answer. Some say it evolved from the Altaic language family which includes Japanese,

Mongolian, and Turkish while others say it has no relation to other languages (Korean, 2016).

Korean has twenty-two consonant phonemes and nine vowels. Korean does share grammar and

vocabulary characteristics with Japanese and Chinese (Korean, 2016). Also, the vocabulary

used in Korean sometimes depends on what social status the person is speaking to. Special

nouns or verb endings are used to show respect when speaking to someone in a position of rank

like an employer or teacher (Korean, 2016). In Sarahs case, I cant be sure how she was

changing her dialect or vocabulary to talk to me or even if it matters much in the material she

used, but it could be something important to note. According to one source I found, the most

common politeness level in the language has most verbs ending in /jo/ which can be used on

almost anyone and I did hear a few words like that in Sarahs Korean passage but I cannot be

sure they are verbs because I do not know the language (South Korean Language, n.d.).

Korean includes the same voiceless stops and affricates as English, /p/, /t/, /k/, and /t/ but

in Korean, these four sounds are split into three types of phonation that are considered separate

phonemes (Yu Cho, 2016). The first of these is plain (also called lax or lenis), which is written

with no diacritic and pronounced with slight aspiration. The second is aspirated, which is

written /p/, /t/, /k/, and /t/ and pronounced with strong aspiration. And the third is tense (also

called fortis, hard, or glotalized), which is written /p/, /t /, /k/, and /t / and pronounced with little

to no aspiration which comes off sounding weakly enunciated or unfinished. These tense

phonemes are under much investigation because they are rather elusive and difficult to hear and

create for non-Korean speakers (Korean Phonology, Wikipedia, 2016). Because of the

distinction of plain, aspirated, and tense stops and affricates, the use of these different phonemes
THE KOREAN INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH 5

can change the meaning of a word. For example, while [pul] means fire, [pul] means grass

and [pul] means horn. This is one example of many sets of minimal triplets and pairs in

Korean (Yu Cho, 2016).

The voiced versions of these phonemes, /b/, /d/, /g/, and /d/, are simply allophones for

the phonemes, so although I used them in my transcription of the Korean passage and word

translations, they are not recognized as distinguished phonemes by Korean speakers (Help: IPA

for Korean, 2016). For example, in the Korean passage, when Sarah says [imida], the Korean

/t/ phoneme becomes a /d/ sound because it is surrounded by two voiced sounds.

The only fricatives that exist in the Korean language are /s/, /s /, and /h/ and in contrast

with the stops, there are no minimal pairs for /s/ and /s / (Yu Cho, 2016). None of these three

change to a voiced allophone like the stops and affricates do (Help: IPA for Korean, 2016).

Therefore, since the /z/ sounds is not used in Korean, I caught Sarah using an /s/ in the Rainbow

Passage in places we would use a /z/ like in [kls], while native English speakers would say

[klz]. This did not happen every time though. She did pronounce a few /z/ sounds, like in

[hoazon] and [hz] which could be because she happened to be paying more caution at the time

she read those words. Wikipedia also tells me that in Korean, an /s/ sound can become a //

allophone when placed before /l/ or /j/ but I did not come across that situation in either the

Korean passage or the Rainbow Passage (Help: IPA for Korean, 2016). Korean has the same

three nasals as English does: /m/, /n/, and //, so there was nothing to note in that category.

While Korean and English share the approximates /w/, /l/, and /j/, there is no // sound in

Korean. Instead, they use the alveolar flap, //. Much like in English, this seems to only be used

between two vowels like when Sarah says [nigwio] or [mia]. The concept of the flap is a

little elusive to me, especially when it is said in place of an //. Some sources I found indicated
THE KOREAN INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH 6

that the flap is a separate phoneme while others implied that it could replace an /l/. I wonder if it

could also be just an allophone for /d/ or /t/ like it is in English. I did find that modern Korean

vernacular has been known to borrow words from Mongolian, Sanskrit, and even English, so I

feel justified in speculating that this could be the case (Korean, 2016). Another elusive

approximate sound of Korean is //. This is listed as a phoneme on the Wikipedia chart for

Korean consonants, but does not show up in any other source I used for Korean. This sound is

reminiscent of an /l/, but is a central approximate rather than a lateral approximate (IPA

Charts, 2016). I did not come across this sound in the Korean passage or word translations, but

it is possible that my English-trained ears simply hear it as an /l/ like I recorded in [naza:l] or in

[t sole] possibly.

In Korean, there are no dental or labiodental sounds, which means that Sarahs native

tongue does not include the English sounds /f/, /v/, //, or //. She seemed to catch the two

labiodentals each time they appeared in the Rainbow Passage, although a few of her /v/ sounds in

the word /v/ (of), seemed to be devoiced at the end which is why I sometimes marked an /f/

diacritic. Im not sure why this would be since neither labiodental exists in Korean. She also

seems to devoice the dental // occasionally as well. For example, she pronounces the word

these as [is] rather than [is] or [iz] (another example of devoicing the /z/ as well). Other

times she will change // into /d/ like in [d] (the), or [wid] (with). This is likely because /d/

is the closest sound to // that shows up in Korean. This is not a completely consistent pattern,

however, which tells me that she can definitely form the labiodental and dental sounds but most

likely needs to process them slower as she is reading.

As Sarah said, the English vowel system is very different from the Korean vowel system.

While English has fourteen different vowel sounds, Korean has only nine. All Korean vowels
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are tense vowels which means Sarah had little to no experience making lax vowel sounds until

she started learning English (Kim, 1999). The vowels that English and Korean have in common

are /i/, /e/, //, /u/, /o/, and //. One of my sources said that the distance between the non-high

front vowels, /e/ and / /, is so close that many Koreans may not distinguish them from each other

(Kim, 1999). Korean also has //, /a/, //. It was very hard for me to pick out these sounds

because we dont have them in English. I believe I heard // in her translation of the word

pencil as [dmpi] as well as a few other words in the Korean passage. I heard /a/ several

times as well such as in [imida] and [ago] but that sound wasnt quite as difficult for me to pick

out since I know it is somewhere between the English vowels // and // and it appears in

English diphthongs such as /a/ and /a/. The Korean vowel //, however, was so difficult for

me to pick out that I did not end up using it at all. It is possible it was used in words I heard the

/u/ sound like [kuta], but I didnt feel confident enough to use it. It is also important to note

that any of the nine Korean vowels can be held out longer which is marked with an ellipse, like

used in [teakto:] (Help: IPA for Korean, 2016).

Korean does not have the English vowels //, //, //, //, //, //, //, and // and I did see

examples of some of these in the Rainbow Passage. Sarah would often replace // and // in

words like the and is with /i/ because that is a close Korean substitute. Similarly, she would

replace //, and // with /a/ in words like hands and raindrops. I didnt notice any struggles

with // and // although one could argue that some // sounds she made like in look were

somewhat reminiscent of the /u/ vowel. I did also notice that in the word above, she used more

of a // rather than a // and I cant come up with a good explanation for this except for the

suggestion that it could possibly because she is rounding the sound more to make it closer to an

/o/ which she has in Korean. Sarah did not have any problems with the rhoticity vowels // and
THE KOREAN INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH 8

// that I noticed, which is surprising considering Korean does not have any sort of an // sound

so the only explanation that sounds reasonable to me is that her English classes may focus on

these sounds a lot making her well-practiced.

English and Korean do not share any diphthongs. Korean has thirteen different

diphthongs, twelve of which contain a glide. These sounds such as /w/ and /j/ are considered

semivowels and are often placed in diphthongs because they can follow consonants that are the

first sound of a word, which no other consonant can do, and because Hangul orthography

considers them vowels (Korean Phonology, Wikipedia, 2016). I did not use any of these

diphthongs because I found it very difficult to hear them especially considering the fact that

many of them contain vowels and/or glides I do not use in English. I did not notice many, if any,

issues with Sarahs pronunciation of English diphthongs. If I needed to surmise about one, it

would be that in some cases one could argue that she used a pure /o/ sound rather than the /o/

diphthong.

Syllables in Korean always begin with a consonant followed by a vowel. They often end

with a nasal or a vowel which I saw plenty of examples of in the word translations and the

Korean passage. There are no tones and few stressed syllables in Korean but this did not seem to

affect Sarah as she read the Rainbow passage with most of the same intonation I would have

used (South Korean Language, n.d.). I did end up marking some stress in the Korean passage

but I think she was giving me that intonation because she was reciting off parts of her story to me

as a list. I am interested to know how here intonation would change in a normal conversation

with someone who speaks Korean as well. I also noticed that there are very few consonant

clusters in Korean, if any, and this has influence on Sarahs English in instances where she drops

a consonant like in [fan z] rather than [fan dz] (finds). Korean generally uses the same
THE KOREAN INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH 9

diacritics as English but the one that appeared most in my transcription was the nasalization of

vowels such as in [hamjn].

In conclusion, there are many influences that my subjects Korean background has on her

English speaking. It is very complicated to compare two languages in this way especially since I

have no experience with Korean. Therefore, I hope that my findings and suggestions do English

and Korean some justice and I believe that using my knowledge of phonetics, I have at least

made a valid effort at that.

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References

Help:IPA for Korean (2016, November 12). In Wikipedia. Retrieved November 20, 2016.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) charts (2016). In Paul Meier Dialect Services. Retrieved

November 20, 2016.

Kim, H. (1999, June 25). Korean Phonology for the KAEPS system. In Young Korean. Retrieved

November 20, 2016.

Korean (2016). In Accredited Language Services. Retrieved November 20, 2016.

Korean phonology (2016, November 20). In Wikipedia. Retrieved November 20, 2016.

South Korean language: Dialects and peculiarities of South Korean (n.d.). In Just Landed.

Retrieved November 20, 2016.

Yu Cho, Y. (2016, October). Korean Phonetics and Phonology. In Linguistics: Oxford Research

Encyclopedias. Retrieved November 20, 2016.