[KS] Long vs short vowels in verb and adjective conjugations

[Ri Hwasu]

Vowel length is no longer a distinctive feature in Korean in any position.  
A long and a short vowels are distinguished only by the speakers of the 
central dialects who are at least seventy years old and by the compilers of 
the Korean language dictionaries.  
For the younger generations, vowel length is barely understood only by 
comparison and careful observation of  the pair of homophones such as 
pam(night) / pa-m(chestnut), nun(eye) / nu-n(snow), py^ong(bottle) / 
py^o-ng(sickness) and so on. 

Besides, the younger generations who are under the age of fifty or so 
hardly distinguish an /ae/ from an /e/ and an /oe/ from a /we/ and /wae/. 


>From: Ross King <jrpking at interchange.ubc.ca>
>Reply-To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
>To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
>Subject: Re: [KS] Long vs short vowels in verb and adjective conjugations
>Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:15:00 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Hi Stefan:
>
>You sort of answer your own question, but the easiest way to do it this:
>
>vowel length is only distinctive in standard Korean in first syllables.
>
>So once a form that otherwise has a long vowel in first-syllable position 
gets pushed out of that first-syllable slot, bye-bye vowel length.
>
>Cheers,
>
>
>
>--
>Ross King
>Professor of Korean, University of British Columbia
>and
>Dean, Korean Language Village, Concordia Language Villages
>
>

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