Lesson 105: 받침, part 2 — doubles and linking

Lesson 104 covered the sixteen single letters that can close a syllable. Eleven more are pairs of consonants sharing the one slot: ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄽ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, ㅄ. Sixteen plus eleven is the twenty-seven.

Five rules, stated up front#

The deck opens with these, and they are worth reading before any of the detail:

1. Only one of a doubled 받침 is pronounced when the syllable stands alone.
2. Sound changes when syllables meet. A 받침 followed by another syllable is not necessarily the sound it is on its own.
3. A 받침 carries over into the next syllable when that syllable begins with ㅇ.
4. There are many such rules, and they depend on the initial consonant of the following syllable.
5. When in doubt, look it up. The National Institute of Korean Language dictionary gives the pronunciation alongside the spelling.

Rule 5 is not a cop-out. Korean spelling is morphophonemic — it preserves the shape of the word rather than its sound, so that 읽 stays 읽 in every form even though it is pronounced four different ways. That is a feature for reading and a tax on speaking, and the dictionary is how you pay it.

Where the doubles land#

Same seven buckets as before — the ringed letters are the eleven being added:

There is no tidy rule for which half of a pair survives — ㄺ keeps the ㄱ but ㄼ keeps the ㄹ. Learn them as eleven facts.

One stem, four pronunciations#

읽 — the stem of 읽다, to read — makes the point on its own:

Four surface forms, one spelling. The spelling is the one that tells you it is the same word.

연음 — linking#

The single most useful rule of the five. When a syllable ends in a consonant and the next one begins with ㅇ, the consonant slides into the empty slot.

ㅇ is silent in the initial position, so that slot is genuinely vacant, and Korean fills it rather than leaving a gap. Watch the orange slot empty and the amber one fill:

This is why 한국어 does not sound like han-guk-eo. Nothing is being dropped or slurred — the ㄱ has simply moved one slot to the right, out of 국 and into the empty consonant position of 어.

The last two are the doubled finals doing it: 읽 keeps its ㄹ and sends only the ㄱ across, 젊 keeps its ㄹ and sends the ㅁ. Which half stays and which half travels is the same eleven facts from the table above.

Two exceptions worth knowing#

Palatalisation. A ㄷ or ㅌ 받침 followed by 이 does not link cleanly — it becomes ㅈ or ㅊ:

Only before 이. 같은 is [가튼], with the ㅌ intact, because the vowel is 으.

ㅎ drops. A ㅎ in the 받침 slot disappears before a vowel rather than linking:

많아요 does both at once: the ㅎ of ㄶ drops, then the ㄴ links across.

Two words from this lesson’s culture half are themselves sound-change examples. 축하합니다 is pronounced [추카함니다] — the ㄱ meets the ㅎ and fuses into an aspirated ㅋ. 기억나요 is [기엉나요] — ㄱ before ㄴ nasalises to [ng], exactly as 읽는 does above.

Vocabulary: family#

Korean kinship terms are more specific than English ones: they encode the side of the family, and for siblings they encode the speaker’s gender too.

The 외- prefix marks the mother’s side throughout.

Siblings#

Elder siblings get four different words depending on who is speaking; younger ones get 동생 regardless, optionally specified as 남동생 or 여동생. That asymmetry is the language telling you that seniority is the thing being tracked, not gender.

Work culture: hold on#

잠시만요 and 잠깐만요 are the ones you will actually hear — on the phone, at a desk, squeezing past someone in a corridor.

Work culture: congratulations#

Birthdays:

생일 축하합니다!
[saeng-il chu-ka-ham-ni-da]
Happy birthday!

Sung, it is the Happy Birthday tune with 사랑하는 (dear) plus the person’s name or title in the third line — 사랑하는 ○○ 책임님, 생일 축하합니다.

생일 has an honorific form, 생신. Use 생신 for anyone senior — a manager, a parent, a grandparent. Wishing your 상무님 a happy 생일 is not wrong so much as slightly childish.

Work culture: I remember / I don’t#

기억 (記憶) is memory; 기억나다 is to come to mind.

안 placed before the verb is the general negator, and it is the simplest way to negate anything in Korean. Note the construction is not “I remember” but “the memory comes to me” — so failing to remember is something that happens to you rather than something you did wrong. Which is a softer thing to say in a meeting.

Practice links#

• Final consonants and linking, part 1
• Final consonants and linking, part 2