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한글 → [hɑŋɡɯl]

Type something in the box above. Upon launching, a random word will appear

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Preview:

어케함? · Help
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Phonological rules

Convert a wordlist

Convert many words with the settings above. Example file for reference

Your input:
읊지마
Your IPA output:

Background

한글 (Hangul or Hangeul) is the default writing system natively used in both North and South Korea. Unsurprisingly, Korean speakers generally do not use other systems; using Chinese characters is not the norm anymore. However, for linguistic research, there are two obvious downsides of writing in Hangul. First, the international audience does not readily recognize Hangul. Second, Hangul is syllabic, meaning that representing sub-syllabic structures can be a headache.

Researchers typically use the IPA system or the Yale Romanization system to represent the Korean language. Each sub-component of Hangul, called 자모 camo, generally represents a phoneme, as long as the word is monomorphemic. Thus, there is a relatively faithful correspondence between each camo letter and a phonetic symbol.

This tool

Researchers often have to convert Hangul mechanically. This tool aims to make that process easier and more consistent.

The target audience is researchers in Korean linguistics, who may find it tedious to blindly translate one phonemic system, i.e., Hangul, to another, i.e., IPA or Yale. It automatically converts 한글 into IPA symbols, hence the name Hangul-to-IPA. It also supports the Yale Romanization system.

Phonological rules in Korean

This web app is an automaton that blindly applies SPE-styled phonological rules to an underlying form. The Hangul input is assumed to be a faithful representation of the underlying representation. The phonological rules considered in this tool are only those which are NOT sensitive to an extra-phonological environment.However, in reality, the actual pronunciation is conditioned by external factors.That is, the results of the app can differ substantially from the actual pronunciation.Take this as a disclaimer! For reference on the rules applied in this app, please see Shin, Kiaer, and Cha (2012), Ch. 8.

Related resource

K-SPAN (Holliday, Turnbull, and Eychenne 2017) is a similar but quite different resource on applying phonological rules to Korean words. The difference is that this web app allows Hangul non-words. You can even enter nonsensical items like ㅋㅋㄹㅃㅃ.