Does anyone else think that Korean has too many vowel combinations? I find this really difficult to learn as a beginner in learning the language. How can we practice chatting with others to get used to speaking in our target languages?
"나는 한국인 아닙니다".
I am not sure if there are too many cuz there are more in English I think. I mean I see more vowel sounds in English. Probably it is better if you have a native speaker or a teacher who can help you. Once you memorize all the sounds of consonants and vowels, reading Korean letters becomes quite easy. Good luck!
I don't think there's too many vowel combinations at all.
In English, we represent multiple sounds with one symbol/character. This is very confusing and makes pronunciation of an unfamiliar word very difficult.
In Korean, they choose to represent each sound with a separate symbol/character. Eleven of the vowels are just compound vowels (two letters smooshed together) and don't make any new sounds really (there's an added "w" sound, but the vowel part is nothing new). Sure, some letters are pronounced essentially the same as each other in modern-day times/new generation, but originally they were unique.
In English too though we can represent one sound with various letter combinations.
One more reason I think Romanization is stupid - it all can be interpreted in so many different ways. English is not Korean. The only way to learn how Korean sounds is by listening to Korean.
Oh yeah, I am in now way in favor of Romanization for the Korean alphabet. It's interesting that they invented their own alphabet to replace Chinese characters. It may be the most geometrically pleasing alphabet in the world, based on their experience of imitating Chinese characters with their own letter combinations.
But I have to say that I see many more vowels in a typical Korean word, compared to what we have in English. And the pronunciation of those vowel sounds seems to be the biggest challenge for me in learning the language. For example, when they copy English words into Korean, they really draw out each sound into its own syllable. However, in words that are authentically Korean, these sounds (especially vowel sounds) are all crowded together into each other.
I would like to have more Korean friends to help me with learning these things, as I know that the only way to really learn the language is through people like that. But I do enjoy reading and learning new vocabulary by myself simply from examples online, even if that is not the normal way for a person to learn the language properly.
저는 한국인이 아닙니다.
