Korean And Chinese Phonological Comparison

A comparative study between Korean and Chinese phonological structureSince the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korean and China in 1992, the relations between the two countries have become closer and closer, which resulted in the increase of the learners of both countries studying the opposite language. Consequently, a lot of textbooks about how to teach and learn the two languages have been published in recent years. Chinese and Korean are typologically different languages, so it is not easy to learn either one as a foreign language. However, the two languages share one point in common, that is, the phonetic annotation of Chinese characters(@).Although the pronunciations of the phonetic annotation of the two languages are different, there are corresponding rules between them, which have existed in the two languages since very ancient time. If we make a comparative study of the phonological components between the two languages, we can find the corresponding rules, which will greatly help the language learners who take the two languages as their target learning language respectively.We know that it is not enough to compare the phonetic elements of Korean and Mandarin only in their modern forms, because the two languages have different systems, some phonetic correspondences cannot be well explained if we do not make a historical study. The Chinese phonology has experienced a very long history andfchanged complicatedly from ancient to modern times. The phonology of Korean has also changed a lot during the history. So without a historical study, the comparative research will be very limited.Mandarin is Han Nationality's common language, which came from ancient Chinese. The phonetic annotation of Chinese characters in Korean was also greatly influenced by ancient Chinese. Although Korean has borrowed the Chinese characters with their archaic and ancient pronunciation and has changed a great deal in their later development, the corresponding relations between ancient Chinese and modern Korean can still be found. And the corresponding relations between Mandarin andancient Chinese are also there. Therefore, by the comparative study between ancient Chinese and the phonetic annotation of the two languages, we will easily understand the corresponding relations between Mandarin and modern Korean in the phonetic annotation of Chinese characters.The past research of the phonetic annotation of Chinese characters in the two languages was concentrated mainly on either the ancient phonologies or just on the comparison of modern phonetic annotation of Chinese characters of the two languages. The former is of little practical value in language teaching and learning although it is academically esteemed. And the latter cannot clearly explain the corresponding relations between the two languages. It seems to us that nobody has yet tried to do a complete comparison between the two phonetic annotations in both the synchronic and diachronic ways.This paper tries to explain the corresponding relations with some exceptions by trying to find the corresponding rules and the exceptions of the phonological components of the phonetic annotations of Chinese characters of Korean, ancient Chinese and Mandarin. The result may help the learners to understand and master the phonological systems of both languages.