Word Wednesday: More Vowels

So, last time we went over the "regular" Korean vowels.  That means this week it is "irregular" vowels...or "dipthongs."

They look like this:

These are surprisingly easy to learn...if you have learned the regular vowels.  Most of them simply add a "w" sound to the front of the vowel.  But be fair warned, some of these are not always consistently romanized and I will try to point them out.  Let's begin, shall we?



ㅐ
Romanized as ae...and pronounced like a "long a" sound in English.  So, "a" like "bake."

ㅒ
Romanized as "yae" and it is pronounced like "yay"...easy, right?

ㅔ
Romanized as e...and it is a "short e" sound...so like the "e" in "egg".

ㅖ
This one is super easy.  Romanized as "ye."  It is pronounced "ye"...as in "ye olde shoppe."

ㅘ
If you will remember ㅏ is pronounced as a "short a"....and "ah" sound.  So that means that ㅘ will be spelled "wa" and pronounced as "wa" as in wash.

ㅙ
So, we just learned that ㅐis the "long a"...which will make ㅙ romanized as "wae" and pronounced like "way."

ㅚ
Tricky because it is deceptively like the previous one.  Also tricky because you will see it romanized as either "oe" or "oi."  It is pronounced "way"...the Korean surname 최(Choi) is pretty common...and pronounced like "ch-way."

ㅝ
This one is spelled and pronounced "wo"...like "won"...easy-peasy.

ㅞ
So, we know that ㅔ is spelled e and makes an "eh" sound, right?  Therefore, ㅞ is romanized as "we"...but the pronunciation is closer to "weh" like "wet."

ㅟ
Again, if ㅣ is spelled "i" and pronounced as a long e...this one is spelled "wi" and pronounced "we" like "we" as in us.  That is only funny if you know that we play a lot of Scrabble in my class and I have strict rules about abbreviations.  One student played "us" and others were upset that I let him because he had explained that he did not mean for it to be "US" like short for United States, but "us" like "we."

ㅢ
This one is spelled as either "ui" or "ee."  I usually see it translated as "ee."  Most guide books tell you it is pronounced like "we"...but I honestly hear it as a long e sound.  희, is a common component of Korean names...like my own, for example (희진)...and is romanized as "Hee" and pronounced "he."

Ok, there you go!  You know all the Hangul letters now!  Yay!