Addressing Discrimination in the Asian Diaspora | December 2021 East Asia Workshop

Chinese Pronunciation

Adapted from Chinese Pronunciation Guide for Beginners (meetmandarin.com)

A note on Pronunciation of Chinese Words

The pinyin romanization system is the official system of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the system adopted by most US newspapers and magazines.  It is one of the easiest romanizations to learn with fewer letters per sound than any other system.  Most of the pronunciations are easily identifiable for non-Chinese speakers, with the following exceptions:

C is pronounced like ts, as in “bats”
Ch is like j, as in “jump”
Q is like ch, as in “chew”
X is like sh as in “shoe”

Japanese Pronunciation

Adapted from A Guide to Japanese Pronunciation: Sounds, Words, and Sentences (tofugu.com) and Learn Hiragana: The Ultimate Guide (tofugu.com)

The Japanese language uses 3 writing systems: hiragana and katakana (both phonetic syllabaries) and kanji (Chinese characters).

Japanese has just 5 vowel sounds:

a  (ah) as is “car”
i  (ee) as is “eel”
u  (ooh) as is “you”
e  (eh) as is “egg”
o  (oh) as in “oh my!”

The following sounds don’t have an exact English equivalent:

f: Traditionally, the letter f only appears in Japanese as fu. This is a soft sound, somewhere between an f and h, and sounds similar to the pronunciation “who.”

r: The sound of the letter r in Japanese (seen as ra-ri-ru-re-ro) falls somewhere between the English pronunciation of r and l. The tongue touches the top of the mouth, but only briefly.

Korean Pronunciation

Adapted from How to Correctly Say Hangul Letters & Words (90daykorean.com) and Korean Pronunciation (howtostudykorean.com)

The Korean language is written in Hangul. Hangul was created by King Sejong of the Joseon Dynasty and proclaimed Korea’s first alphabet in 1446. It is one of the youngest alphabets and known as one of the easiest to learn to read and write.

Hangul consists of 10 vowels and 14 consonants. You will also see vowel combinations along with double consonants.

Let’s look at some common words you already know.

Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is pronounced “soul” by the majority of English speakers. However, the pronunciation of the two syllables together sounds a tad different in Korean.
서울 = [서] seo + [울] ul = seo-ul
The “seo” sounds like the first syllable of “subtle” and “ul” sounds like “ool” of “tool.”

Samsung, the multinational electronics corporation, is often pronounced “Sam” similar to the name Sam and “sung” as in the past tense of sing. The latter half sounds the same in Korean.
삼성 = [삼] sam  + [성] sung = sam-sung
“Sam” along with all “a” sounds in Korean sounds more like “ah” similar to “palm” or even “pot.”

In many consonant romanizations you will see 2 possible letter sounds. Sometimes, these consonants have a slightly different pronunciation depending on where they are placed in the spelling of the syllable. Other times, these consonants sound like a combination of the 2 letter sounds. This recognition comes with practice!