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Sibilant element in Kor., Jap. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| sebngwa3 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6164 days ago 200 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English | Message 1 of 2 04 November 2009 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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"It may may asked whether the Korean language is adapted to public speaking. We would answer that it is eminently so. For, in the first place, it is a sonorous, vocal language. The Koreans say that in any syllable the vowel is the "mother" and the consonant is the "child," showing that they have grasped the essential idea that vowel sounds form the basis of human speech. *The sibilant element is much less conspicuous in Korean than in Japanese* [I thought Korean has much more consonants and therefore the sibilant element is much *more* conspicuous in Korean. Right?] and one needs only to hear a public speech in Japanese and one in Korean to discover the vast advantage which Korean enjoys. Then again, the almost total lack of accent in Japanese words is a serious drawback from the point of view of oratory. So far as we can see there is nothing in Korean speech that makes it less adapted to oratory than English or any other western tongue. In common with the language of Cicero and Demosthenes, Korean is composed of periodic sentences, by which we mean that each sentence reaches its climax in the verb, which conies at the end; and there are no weakening addenda, such as often make the English sentence an anticlimax. In this respect the Korean surpasses English its a medium for public speaking." Homer Hulbert on the Korean Language Edited by sebngwa3 on 04 November 2009 at 2:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 2 of 2 08 November 2009 at 9:42am | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting quote. I'm no expert on Korean, but 'shi' and 'su' are very common sounds in Japanese, and sibilants tend to
get palatalized (which is why し is pronounced /ɕi/ instead of /si/).
I disagree with this bit. Japanese's pitch accent gives it a nice melodic cadence when delivered by a good speaker — probably much like classical Greek used to have. This frees up volume stress to be used purely for emphasis. In addition, Japanese provides a plentitude of particles for expressing nuance that English must rely on stress for, and it is much easier to compose long, intricate sentences in Japanese than in English. (As a translator, I frequently encounter long Japanese sentences that simply cannot be adequately expressed in a single English sentence.) Edited by Captain Haddock on 08 November 2009 at 9:44am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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