Comparative study of Korean and Sinhala monophthongs
The purpose of this study is to make Sri Lankan learners and Korean teachers of the Korean language recognize the difference of phoneme between Korean and Sinhala and to help develop efficient ed...
Comparative study of Korean and Sinhala monophthongs
The purpose of this study is to make Sri Lankan learners and Korean teachers of the Korean language recognize the difference of phoneme between Korean and Sinhala and to help develop efficient educational methods for teaching pronunciation by comparing monophthong of the two languages phonologically and phonetically.
First, I compared between Korean and Sinhala monophthong systems phonologically. As a result, there are 8 monophthongs in Korean, and 6 monophthongs in Sinhala. There are no phonemes of ‘ㅡ/?/’ and ‘ㅓ/Λ/’ in Sinhala. Also, Korean ‘ㅐ/ε/’ is pronounced at a higher place than Sinhala ‘ㅐ/æ/’, and Korean ‘ㅏ/a/’ is pronounced at much back than Sinhala ‘ㅏ/a/'.
However, it is difficult to know the correct sound through the comparison of the phonological system, also it is hard to use it in the Korean pronunciation education. So I did acoustic analysis using Praat.
Before starting the test, I conducted a listening recognition test of Korean monophthongs to Sri Lankan learners to check whether they recognize the pronunciation of Korean monophthongs correctly or not. As a result, the vowels which Sri Lankan learners recognized well were ‘ㅏ, ㅜ, ㅡ, ㅣ', and the vowels which they felt difficult to listen were ‘ㅓ’ and ‘ㅗ’. This is an error which was not found through the comparison of phonologic system.
The test was conducted targeting 20 people each of Korean and Sri Lankan men. First, I let them pronounce 8 monophthongs of Korean and 6 monophthongs of Sinhala in an isolated environment. As a result, there is no difference between ‘ㅐ/ε/’ and ‘ㅔ/e/’ which is distinguished phonologically in Korean monophthong system. It is a contrasting result that Sinhala ‘ㅐ/æ/’ and ‘ㅔ/e/’ are distinguished clearly. Also, there is no meaningful difference between Korean and Sinhala ‘ㅏ’ and ‘ㅜ’ based on the height of the tongue. However, except in the case of the vowel ‘ㅐ’, there are meaningful differences based on the place of the tongue. In other words, Sinhala monophthongs are generally pronounced at a much front side than Korean monophthongs. But Sri Lankan learners pronounce Korean and Sinhala monophthongs at the same position. So there are no significant difference between the sound of the Korean and Sinhala monophthongs which are pronounced by Sri Lankan learners, except the ‘ㅐ’ sound. But the sound ‘ㅡ’ which does not exist in Sinhala is pronounced a lower front place than Korean, and ‘ㅓ’ is pronounced at the same place with Korean ‘ㅗ’. Confusion of the sound ‘ㅓ’ and ‘ㅗ’ gave a similar result with the former test result. It is understood that Sri Lankan learners of the Korean language cannot recognize the difference between ‘ㅓ’ and ‘ㅗ’.
However, the test errors do match with the difference of Korean listening recognition test. Thus, a test about Koreans' perception of Korean vowels pronounced by Sri Lankan students needs to be conducted. It needs to carry out a test about women's pronunciation, too. Test materials also need to be expanded not only monophthongs in an isolated environment but also monophthongs in vocabulary or sentences.
In spite of the limitations, it is meaningful that this study has examined the comparison of Korean and Sinhala monophthong targeting Sri Lankan learners which has not been done ever before. I hope the result of this study would be helpful to the Sri Lankan learners and Korean teachers.