French → Korean
Korean uses 34 sounds. You already own 17 of them from French. The other 17 are the work — and 11 of those are the dangerous kind: close enough to something you already say that you will substitute them without hearing yourself do it.
The silent swaps
Your mouth has something close enough to reach for. These survive for years precisely because they sound right to you — the fix is hearing the difference first, not trying harder.
the move: postalveolar → alveolo-palatal
Korean: time · written "ㅅ before i, y-vowels"
The sh of Japanese shi, not the sh of English ship — tongue flat.
Your /ʃ/ is the one in chat (cat).
the move: palatal → velar
Korean: river · written "ㅇ (final)"
ㅇ is /ŋ/ at the END of a syllable and silent at the start — a placeholder that lets a vowel have a block to itself (아, 이, 오).
Your /ɲ/ is the one in montagne (mountain).
the move: aspirated
Korean: arm; eight · written "ㅍ"
Aspirated — a strong puff of air. The p of English 'pot'.
Your /p/ is the one in pain (bread).
the move: close, but not identical
Korean: bread · written "ㅃ"
Tense: the throat stiffens, the release is sharp and there is no puff at all. The third kind of p. Also what plain ㅂ becomes after an obstruent (입구 ipk͈u).
Your /p/ is the one in pain (bread).
the move: close, but not identical
Korean: strawberry · written "ㄸ"
Tense t. 달 tal 'moon', 탈 tʰal 'mask', 딸 t͈al 'daughter' — one triplet to hear the three-way contrast on.
Your /t/ is the one in table (table).
the move: close, but not identical
Korean: flower · written "ㄲ"
Tense k. Also what plain ㄱ becomes after an obstruent: 학교 hakk͈jo.
Your /k/ is the one in quand (when).
the move: close, but not identical
Korean: uncooked rice · written "ㅆ"
Tense s: longer, harder, no breath. 살 sal 'flesh; to live' against 쌀 s͈al 'rice'.
Your /s/ is the one in sel (salt).
the move: unrounded
Korean: Seoul · written "ㅓ"
An unrounded open o — the vowel of English 'cut' but further back. Romanised eo, which misleads everyone; it is one vowel.
Your /ɔ/ is the one in porte (door).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Korean sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
- p = pʰ = p͈ → your p vs vs train this pair →
- t = tʰ = t͈ → your t vs vs train this pair →
- k = kʰ = k͈ → your k vs vs train this pair →
- s = s͈ → your s vs train this pair →
- u = ɯ → your u vs train this pair →
Genuinely new
Nothing in French sits close to these. They sound foreign in your mouth — which is the good news: you can hear that you are not saying them yet.
one
Often faint between vowels (좋아 t͡ɕoa has none left). Merges with a following plain stop into an aspirate: 좋다 t͡ɕotʰa.
Closest thing you own: — but labiodental → glottal.
house
Plain ㅈ — between English ch and j, with the tongue flat. Voiced to /d͡ʑ/ between vowels.
Closest thing you own: — but fricative → affricate, postalveolar → alveolo-palatal.
very
Closest thing you own: — but fricative → affricate, postalveolar → alveolo-palatal.
we; our
A tap, like Spanish single r or the t in American 'water'.
Closest thing you own: — but plosive → tap.
tea; car
Closest thing you own: — but fricative → affricate, postalveolar → alveolo-palatal, aspirated.
to be salty
Tense ㅈ.
Closest thing you own: — but fricative → affricate, postalveolar → alveolo-palatal.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| French | Korean | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed | Syllable-timed, phrase melody |
| Stress | This is the one that surprises everyone: French words have NO fixed stress. Prominence lands on the last syllable of the rhythmic GROUP, not of the word — so the same word is stressed differently depending on where it sits. 'Un chocolat' stresses -lat; 'un chocolat chaud' moves it to chaud and the word chocolat loses it entirely. There are no French minimal pairs by stress, because there is nothing to contrast. | None at word level. No syllable is reduced and no vowel becomes a schwa; every syllable is said in full. What an English ear hears as stress is the phrase-initial rise. |
What you have that Korean doesn't
19 sounds with no job in Korean. They are not mistakes — but they are where an accent leaks in, because a sound you own is easy to use when a hard one is due.
The honest caveat
This is a prediction from the shape of two sound systems, not a recording of you. It says what your inventory makes likely — it cannot know that your French has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned Korean from someone whose accent you copied. A teacher listening to you beats it. Use it to know what to listen for.
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