Lesson 104: 받침, part 1 — the seven sounds

The third slot in a syllable block is the 받침 [bat-chim], the final consonant. Twenty-seven different letters can sit there. They produce seven distinct sounds.

That collapse is the whole lesson. Korean has no released final consonants — the mouth moves into position and stops, without the little puff of air English adds. So the distinctions that matter at the start of a syllable stop mattering at the end of one, and everything falls into seven buckets.

The seven representative sounds#

Which letters land where#

Seven letters collapse into [t] alone. This is why Korean spelling has to be learned rather than derived: 낫, 낮, 낯, 낟 and 낱 are five different words that sound identical in isolation.

ㅇ is silent as an initial and [ng] as a 받침. Same letter, two completely different jobs, decided purely by which slot it occupies. 강 is [gang]; 아 is [a].

The remaining eleven — the doubled 받침 like ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄺ — are lesson 105.

Practice words#

Each block reads across as plain / aspirated / tensed where the contrast exists.

ㄱ [k]#

ㄴ [n]#

눈 is both eye and snow. In speech they are told apart by vowel length — long for snow, short for eye — though that distinction is fading among younger speakers, leaving context to do the work.

ㄷ [t]#

Six words, six different letters in the 받침 slot — ㄷ, ㅅ, ㅈ, ㅌ, ㅅ, ㅊ — and all six sound like [t]. Five of them side by side, with five different letters in the orange slot and one sound between them:

Every one of those is pronounced [t] at the end.

ㄹ [l]#

ㅁ [m]#

ㅂ [p]#

밥 means cooked rice and, by extension, a meal — 밥 먹었어요? (have you eaten?) is a standard greeting, not a question about rice.

ㅇ [ng]#

Vocabulary: the face and head#

Used with 아파요 — it hurts:

(     ) 아파요.
[a-pa-yo]
My ____ hurts.

Work culture: two goodbyes#

안녕 comes from 安寧 — at peace, in good health, without trouble. 안녕히 is its adverb form: peacefully. Every Korean goodbye is a wish that the other person proceeds peacefully, and which verb you attach depends on who is moving.

가다 is to go and 계시다 is the honorific to stay. So you tell the person who is walking away to go well, and the person staying behind to stay well.

The practical consequence at work: leaving the office at the end of the day, you say 안녕히 계세요 to the colleagues still at their desks, and they say 안녕히 가세요 to you. Two different phrases, said simultaneously, at the same door. Getting them backwards is the most common beginner slip there is.

When you get off work#

보다 is plain to see; 뵈다 and 뵙다 are its humble forms, used when the person you are seeing outranks you. To a 책임님 on the way out, 내일 뵙겠습니다.

After a long gap#

Root 오랜만이다. Long time no see.