A descriptive study on the Chinese pronunciation of Korean Hanja at the syllable level

Abstract

Korean has a large number of Sino-Korean words, which are etymologically rooted in logographic Chinese characters (Hanja) but are pronounced with Korean phonology and written in alphabetic Hangul (Wang, Yeon, Zhou, Shu, & Yan, 2016). Sino-Korean words serve as a useful source for Chinese native (L1) speakers to learn vocabulary in Korean as a second language (L2) (Im & Lee, 2008). Correspondence between the Korean and Chinese pronunciation of Hanja has been measured at the phonemic level (Im & Lee, 2008). However, since Chinese L1 speakers tend to apply “whole-word processing” when reading words in an alphabetic L2 (Akamatsu, 2003, p. 210), it is vital to have a better understanding of the correspondent relation between the two languages with regards to Hanja pronunciation at the syllable level instead of at the phoneme level. From a historical linguistic perspective, Korean language started receiving and using Chinese characters and imitating pronunciations of Chinese characters since the era of Old Chinese (or Archaic Chinese, 上古漢語) and Ancient Chinese (or Middle Chinese, 中古漢語) (Moon, 2005). However, the modern pronunciations of Chinese characters in Mandarin and Korean appear to be very different because the pronunciations changed a lot in China due to historical reasons, such as wars and cultural communications with other ethnic groups since the Jin Dynasty (Moon, 2005). The changes in the pronunciations of Chinese characters in Mandarin happened in various aspects. For example, the disappearance of final consonants or checked tones (e.g., 入聲, such as -k, -m, -t, -p) in the Chinese pronunciation of Chinese characters, except for n and ng, is one of the major sources of the difference in pronunciation between the two languages. In ancient Chinese, the pronunciations of many characters (e.g., 福, 感, 習) contain a final consonant. As time went by, such final consonants disappeared. However, the final consonants still exist in the pronunciation of Chinese characters in Korean and varieties of Chinese (i.e., Cantonese).