Siun
How do I know when ㄹ is pronounced r or l?
Apr 20, 2015 4:31 PM
Answers · 3
3
Answer 2 of 2 (Continuing from previous answer): On the last one, be careful of the 받침 rules. (In case you're not familiar: In Korean, when one syllable ends in a consonant sound, and it is followed by a syllable that begins with a vowel sound, you always move the consonant sound terminating the first syllable to the beginning of the following syllable. So 받아 would be pronounced 바다). There are words such as "늙은" (old) where the first syllable actually ends in the ㄱ. If this ended with the first syllable, you would not pronounce the 'ㄹ' at all, but since the next syllable begins with a vowel, you pronounce it like '늘근'. In that case, the first syllable would end in the ㄹ sound in pronunciation. Since it is pronounced with one syllable ending in ㄹ and the next beginning with ㄱ, you would follow the rule of the ㄹ being followed by a consonant, and that would be pronounced with an 'L' sound like "neul-geun." Hope this helps. I invite anyone to constructively critique my answer.
April 20, 2015
3
When it's the first letter of a syllable it's pronounced "r" (except when it's the first letter of the entire word it's pronounced "l" ) and when it's the last letter of a syllable it's pronounced l *special case : if the previous syllable ends in ㄹ and the next one start with ㄹ then it's pronounced like "ll" )
April 20, 2015
2
This is going to be a bit difficult to answer because I am not really sure how you pronounce an 'r' natively. Let me give it a try. (Because of length, I need to break it into two answers. This is answer 1 of 2) Korean does not have an equivalent to the 'r' sound the way 'r' is pronounced in the US. The closest I can hear to this is very close to a Spanish 'r'. I'll use this sound as the reference for the 'r' sound you are asking about. The easiest way to explain it is: When it is a single ㄹ followed by a vowel sound, it has the 'r' sound. When it is a double ㄹ which can happen only by one syllable ending in ㄹ and the next syllable beginning with ㄹ, then it makes an L sound. When one syllable ends in ㄴ and the next syllable begins with ㄹ, then the combination makes an L sound. An example is 광안리 which is the name of a beach near where I live. It is pronounced as "gwangalli" with the L sound. When one syllable ends in ㄹ and the next syllable begins with a consonant sound such as ㄴ or ㅁ, it would be nearly impossible to transition from the Spanish 'r' sound to that consonant sound without lifting your tongue from the roof of your mouth. In those cases, the ㄹ makes an L sound.
April 20, 2015
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