About the phonology of the Korean word "Baduk"

I think it’s very close to the “zachte g”.

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Watched both videos, thank you :smiley: The German speaker very typical: Competely unoffended, replies one short phrase back in German, then continues in English with a typically horrific accent :slight_smile:

So modern Greek γ is to χ (like in German “Bach”) as English v is to f, and like dh (like in English “the”) is to th (like in English “think”). Interesting that the Ancient (or Erasmian? :)) pronunciation g was retained, but switched to a different letter (digraph in this case).

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I think the German speaker was the only one who had no trouble understanding him :stuck_out_tongue:

The “zachte g” (soft g) is how “g” is pronounced in the south of the Netherlands and in Belgium, /ç/ in IPA.
I think it’s closer to the “ch” in German “ich” than the “ch” in German “Bach”.

Yeah, I meant that Greek χ is like “Bach”, and that γ is softer. “Ich” is softer than “Bach”, but still sounds different from γ to me.

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I think the zachte g can be both voiced and voiceless, and both palatal (like the German one) or velar (in the back like the harde g) depending on the word.

Like, in “biechten” it would be voiceless palatal, in “bochten” it would be voiceless velar, in “gaan” voiced palatal and in “goed” voiced velar.


Here’s a video of a guy from Amersfoort (harde g) interviewing people from Brabant (zachte g) about their “g”.

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The Dutch “g” can also be /ɣ/ in IPA, somewhat depending on the geographic region. You’ll find it in words like “muggen” (mosquitos) /'məɣən/. It’s a voiced version of the German “ch” (in IPA /x/ or /ç/).

In the west of Belgium (West Flanders), the “g” can even be pronounced as “h”, which I’d call an extremely soft g. They even made a fake google search page named “hoehel” /huhəl/ in that dialect: https://www.hoehel.be/

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So, modern γ… right? :slight_smile:

I assume that in ancient Greek, γ was pronounced similar to g in Latin (/g/ in IPA), but I know almost nothing about it (I only took a few lessons of ancient Greek in school).
I don’t know if the modern Greek γ is pronounced as the audio sample on Voiced velar fricative - Wikipedia, but the modern Dutch g version that is /ɣ/ in IPA, is similar to that audio sample. Though to my ears, the audio sample has slightly too much of an “r” quality, sounding almost like “gr”.

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Wait a second - is that how your name is pronounced? :slight_smile:

Γεια, Για.

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Wouldn’t those be pronounced identically in modern Greek? Unless Gia had the stress on the first vowel instead?

Gia is a nickname I use for my international career, G pronounced like j in joseki. :wink:

But yes, my actual name starts with Γ.

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I suppose you mean the Japanese pronunciation. Many German, French and Dutch go players pronounce it as their native pronunciation for the letter j.

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Well, I won’t walk into that one :stuck_out_tongue:

Let’s just say it’s pronounced like this

Minus the drama.

And the drugs.

And the legs.

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Is it two syllables like in the movie? This whole time I’ve been saying it my head as one :sweat_smile:

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Yes!

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As for the pronunciation of “joseki”. I think most native English speakers pronounce it fairly closely to Japanese, except they tend to stress the wrong sylable( the 2nd instead of the 1st).

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Most Japanese phonemes aren’t so bad for English speakers, but we tend to just butcher the prosody, haha

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Which tends to change the semantics, though…

Also, the way あ or い is pronounced is usually wrong, and the らりる series is a disaster, it would help a lot more if these were romanised as “la li lu”.


バット、ザ・リアル・プロブレム・イス・ザ・ウェイ・ジャパニーズ・ピーポル・ラーン・ツー・プロナウンス・イングリッシュ。

(try running it through a translator and have the automatic voice read it out loud)

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