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

[Werner Sasse]

Hi, just a short note. I found the discussion interesting, although I never bothered to think about this question (I did not learn my Korean in class but simply by living in Korea for a while)
One thing, however bothered me a bit in the discussion. "hae" and "twae" were discussed as single items, sort of in the middle of nowhere. In my (foreigner...) Korean, however, it makes a difference, whether these morphemes are in isolation as verb final form (like in ad hoc combinations with the following verb or expressions not used so often) or whether they are use in "fixed" combinations like "haessUbnida" (extremely short) or "hae pogessUbnida" (not always, but normally short) "twae itta" vs. "twaenda". Or: has it to do with what kind of "hae" or "twae" (grammatically) we are talking about?
On the whole, however, I agree that this question maybe interesting for linguists, but in most cases neither length leads to misunderstanding in contemporary Korean.
Happy Ch'usOk, Werner
P.S. Middle Korean seems to have had length distinction (normally misinterpreted as "tone distinction" - another nice topic for discussion), but ModKor does not....
> Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 23:15:00 -0700> From: jrpking at interchange.ubc.ca> To: koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws> Subject: Re: [KS] Long vs short vowels in verb and adjective conjugations> > 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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