An Analysis of Korean Monophthongs Produced by Korean Native Speakers and Adult Learners of Korean

한국인과 한국어 학습자의 단모음 발화

This paper attempts to analyze the characteristics of Korean vowel production by 12 Korean native speakers and 36 adult learners. The analyses have been performed with investigations of F1and F2 values. Results showed that there's no significant difference between /ㅔ/ and /H/ and between /ㅗ/ and /ㅜ/ in Korean native speakers' pronunciations. The distinguishing tendencies found in the analyses of foreign learners' pronunciations are fronting and lowering of /ㅗ/ by English speakers, backing and heightening of /ㅓ/ by Japanese speakers and backing and lowering of /ㅏ/ by Chinese speakers. For the limitations of this paper, it has a meaning of a preliminary study and could be developed into further research to show the order of acquisition and L1 transference.