Re: [tlug] Re: austart.sh for Openbox in Ubuntu

[tlug@example.com]

On Thursday 09 August 2007 23:04:52 Simon Cozens wrote:
> Double ha! According to my language teacher, a lot of the Koreans he
> teaches can't tell the difference between voiced and voiceless bilabial
> plosives ("b" versus "p") since Korean only has the voiceless version.
> (Which is unusual; most languages which have only one of the two have
> the "b" sound.) So his remedy for them is to repeat the phrase "boku ha
> baka desu" until they stop saying "poku ha paka desu"...

Actually, the Korean language has both, but one is ambiguous:

바 = "ba" or "pa"
파 = "pa" only

So, Korean people can easily tell the difference...  Actually they have an 
extra that is often difficult for non-Koreans to recognize:

빠 = "ppa", a tense plosive

It is not just the bilabial plosives either:

가 = "ka" or "ga"
카 = "ka" only
까 = "kka"

다 = "ta" or "da"
타 = "ta" only
따 = "tta"

자 = "cha" or "ja"
차 = "cha" only
짜 = "tcha"

(I used the 아 "a" vowel sound in all the above examples, but these consonant 
sounds can be mixed with any other vowel sound, of course.)

When you memorize words in Korean, you memorize the correct pronunciation of 
the given spelling, and there are general rules for which pronunciation to 
use.  (Oddly enough, I cannot state these rules, but you just come to "feel" 
what it should be after enough practice.)  These rules do not always apply 
correctly to foreign words such as Japanese words, though, so you often hear 
mistakes.

Here is a good example that I hear often: "도쿄" is the correct Korean spelling 
for 東京.  The first character is "도," which can be pronounced "do" or "to," so 
many Koreans pronounce it as "Dokyo" instead of "Tokyo."  Note that spelling 
it "토쿄" would solve the problem, but the ambiguously pronounced characters 
are generally preferred over the others.

Cheers,

Travis