A Study on the Korean and Chinese Pronunciation of Chinese Characters and Learning Korean as a Second Language

A Study on the Korean and Chinese Pronunciation of Chinese Characters and Learning Korean as a Second Language Xiao Luo Yike Yang Jing Sun School of Education Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies School of Education University of Cincinnati The Hong Kong Polytechnic University University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH, U.S.A. Hong Kong S.A.R. Cincinnati, OH, U.S.A. luoxo@mail.uc.edu yi-ke.yang@connect.polyu.hk sunj9@mail.uc.edu Abstract Sino-Korean words have their etymological roots in Chinese characters. Previous studies showed that the correspondent relation between Chinese and the Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters facilitates the reading of Sino-Korean words by Chinese learners of Korean as a second language (L2). This study quantifies such correspondence at the syllable level by calculating the degree of correspondence in Korean-Chinese syllables. The degree of correspondence between Korean and Chinese syllables was examined. Results show that among the 406 Chinese character families in Sino-Korean words, 22.7% have an average correspondent consistency lower than 0.5 and 33.3% are equal to or higher than 0.5 but lower than 1. Suggestions for teaching and learning Korean as an L2 are proposed. 1 Introduction Due to cultural interactions in history (Ebrey, 1996), Korean shares a large number of Sino- Korean words with Chinese, which are etymologically rooted in Chinese characters but have their Korean pronunciation (Wang et al., 2016). Traditionally written in logographic Chinese characters, Sino-Korean words are now written in Hangul, the Korean alphabet, which maps a basic grapheme to a single phoneme and combines phonemes into a syllable in a “square- like shape” (Pae, 2018; Wang et al., 2003; Pae et al., 2018). Nevertheless, 70% of the contemporary Korean vocabulary belongs to Sino-Korean words (Cho & Chiu, 2015). They serve as special sources for Chinese native (L1) speakers to learn to read Sino-Korean words in Korean as a second language (L2) or a foreign language (FL) (Im & Lee, 2008; Guo, 2018). The significant role that vocabulary plays in L2 reading is well documented in literature (e.g., Ouellette, 2006). Given the large number of Sino- Korean words in the lexical repertoire, it is worthwhile to examine the degree of correspondence between the Chinese and Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters. This will consequently facilitate teaching, learning, and reading of Sino-Korean words for the large population of L2 Korean learners in China, considering that there has been a growing population of Chinese learners of Korean in recent years (Gao, 2010). 2 Literature Review Comparisons between the Chinese and the Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters have been conducted at the phonemic level. Li (2003) revealed the correspondent relation between the pronunciation of Chinese characters’ initial consonants in Chinese and Korean. For example, he found that the Chinese characters with the initial consonants b, p, and f are pronounced as the initial consonants ㅂ(b) and ㅍ(p) in Korean. He believed that such correspondence would “facilitate the study of Chinese phonetic history and relations between Korean and Chinese language and literature” (Li, 2003, p. 94). However, very few studies have explored the correspondence between the Korean and Chinese vowels or …

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