Abstract

The aim of this study is two-fold. The first is to contrast segmental sounds of Modern Greek and Korean for Korean learners of the Greek language. The second part is some pronunciation instruction suggestions. Our study resulted in an account of specific instances in which pronunciation errors occurred. The first is pronunciations of similar segmental sounds which exist in Korean, but have differences in the way they are articulated. Greek distinguishes plosives (/p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/) and fricatives (/f/, /v/, / θ/, /ð/) according to the vibration of the vocal cords while Korean distinguishes consonants from aspiration and tension. The second is pronunciation of sounds that do not exist in Korean language (/f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /ɾ/). Third, it is pronunciation of allophones. Korean learners sometimes do not recognize the differences depending on the phonological environment when many allophones exist in a single phoneme. There is a tendency to pronounce all the allophones the same as the representative phoneme (e.g., [ɣ] and [ʝ] as [ ] in Korean equating [ ] and /ɣ/, and pronounce [Σ] as /s/, which should sound differently by /s/ and /z/, depending on the phonological environment). In the case of vowels, the sounds of all five vowels of Greek (/i/, /ɛ/, /ɐ/, /o/, /u/) exist in Korean. Therefore, pronunciation of the segmental sound itself is not expected to be difficult, and errors in vowels are likely to occur in diphthongs and stress. In the part of pronunciation instruction, we suggest implicit pronunciation instruction based on the beginner’s level instructions for the Greek proficiency test, focusing on segmental sounds /θ/, /ð/, /ɣ/ and its allophones [ɣ] and [ʝ]. The elements influencing pronunciation include not only segmental sounds but also suprasegmental elements. However, this study could be a starting point for Modern Greek pronunciation research on acquisition and teaching, given that they partly interact with each other.

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