SynthV Wiki:Sandbox/Korean phonetics

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About

Korean is an isolated language spoken in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), as well as in Korean diasporas around the world. The total number of speakers is about 81 million. Korean is considered an isolated language, meaning it has no proven affinities with other languages. However, some linguists suggest that it is related to Altaic languages, including Turkic, Mongolian and Tungus-Manchurian languages, but this hypothesis remains controversial. Historically, the Korean language has been influenced by various language groups: Chinese, Mongolian, Manchu, Japanese, and English. The Korean language uses Hangul, a unique phonetic alphabet consisting of 40 letters: 19 consonants and 21 vowels. Through combinations of vowels and consonants in syllables, Korean allows 11,172 unique syllables to be formed.

Notes on Accent

Despite the general belief that singers completely lose their accents when they sing, this is not the case in every instance, and an accent is possible to be heard even in singing vocals.

However, the reason many are led to believe this is that there are several methods of training singers to disguise or otherwise hide their natural accents—they may even adopt an accent that isn't their own for singing. Samples include genres such as western or country, black music such as jazz or soul. Singing also uses different muscles to speech, resulting in difference of air pressure and way the throat moves. Genres such as opera are most likely to make an accent appear almost entirely absent thanks to the impact of the opera vibrato.

Synthesizer V will capture any form of accent quite easily at times. It depends on the recording method used by the voice provider, type of sound being recorded per sample (accent impact varies per sample and language) and –in the case of Standard voice databases– overall number of samples that make up the voice database (the more samples, the more chance of it slipping in).

Native accented

• UNI: She is the first voice database whose base language is Korean.

Non-native accented

Synthesizer V Studio 2 introduces Cross-Lingual Singing Synthesis for Korean, which allows all AI 2 voice databases to sing in all languages supported by the software, regardless of the language(s) in which they were recorded. All voice databases recorded in languages other than Korean are considered non-native accented, as they are intentionally left with subtle accents.

Phonetic List

NOTE: The symbols are based on the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ2OSrvNcCk. It is currently unknown whether this is the complete list, as the full list is currently unavailable and will be available from 21 March.

Symbol	Classification	IPA Symbol / Name	Sample Hangul / RRoK	Notes	Related Phonemes
[6]	vowel	a open front vowel, ɐ near-open central vowel	ㅏ (a)	Typically transcribed as /a/ but actual pronunciation is closer to [ɐ]	[V] (backed) [e_o] (closed)
[V]	vowel	ʌ open-mid back unrounded vowel	ㅓ (eo)
[e_o]	vowel	e̞ mid front unrounded vowel	ㅐ(ae), ㅔ (e)	Most speakers in South Korea no longer differentiate between ㅐ /ɛ/ and ㅔ /e/, merging both into [e̞]
[o]	vowel	o close-mid back rounded vowel	ㅗ (o)
[u]	vowel		ㅜ (u)
[M]	vowel	ɯ close back unrounded vowel	ㅡ (eu)
[i]	vowel	i close frount unrounded vowel	ㅣ (i)
[g]	initial consonant	k~g velar plosive	ㄱ (g)	Pronounced [k] at the beginning of a sequence, pronounced [g] elsewhere	[k_t] (tensed) [k] (aspirated)
[k_t]	initial consonant	k͈ tense velar plosive	ㄲ (gg)	Tense /k/	[g] (lax) [k] (aspirated)
[n]	initial consonant	n alveolar nasalɲ palatal nasal	ㄴ (n)
[d]	initial consonant	t~d alveolar plosive	ㄷ (d)	Pronounced [t] at the beginning of a sequence, pronounced [d] elsewhere	[
	initial consonant
[t_t]	initial consonant	t͈ tense alveolar plosive	ㄸ (dd)	Tense /t/	[d] (lax) [t] (aspirated)
[4]	initial consonant	ɾ alveolar tap	ㄹ (r)	Can occur word-initially or between two vowels	[l] (allophone)
[l]	initial consonant	l lateral alveolar approximantʎ palatal lateral approximant	ㄹ (l)	Can occur word-initially, following a voiced ending consonant, or syllable-finally	[4] (allophone)
[m]	initial consonant	m bilabial nasal	ㅁ (m)
[b]	initial consonant	p~b bilabial plosive	ㅂ (b)	Pronounced [p] at the beginning of a sequence, pronounced [b] elsewhere	[p_t] (tensed) [p] (aspirated)
[p_t]	initial consonant	p͈ tense bilabial plosive	ㅃ (bb)	Tense /p/	[b] (lax) [p] (aspirated)
[s]	initial consonant	s alveolar fricative, ɕ alveolopalatal fricative	ㅅ (s)	May be aspirated [sʰ] word-initially	[s_t] (tense)
[s_t]	initial consonant	s͈ tense alveolar fricative, ɕ͈ tense alveolopalatal fricative	ㅆ (ss)		[s] (lax)
[dz\]	initial consonant	ʨ~dʑ alveolo-palatal affricate	ㅈ (j)	Pronounced /ʨ/ at the beginning of a sequence, pronounced /dʑ/ elsewhere	[ts\] (tensed)
[ts\]	initial consonant	t͈ɕ tense alveolo-palatal affricate	ㅉ (jj)	Tense /ʨ/	[dz\] (lax) [ts\_h] (aspirated)
[ts\_h]	initial consonant	ʨʰ aspirated alveolo-palatal affricate	ㅊ (ch)		[dz\] (unaspirated)
[k]	initial consonant	kʰ aspirated velar plosive	ㅋ (k)		[g] (unaspirated)
[t]	initial consonant	tʰ aspirated alveolar plosive	ㅌ (t)		[d] (unaspirated)
[p]	initial consonant	pʰ aspirated bilabial plosive	ㅍ (p)		[b] (unaspirated)
[h]	initial consonant	h~ɦ glottal fricative ç~ʝ palatal fricative ɸ~β bilabial fricative x~ɣ velar fricative	ㅎ (h)	[h] before /a, ʌ, e/ [ç] before /i, y, j/ [ɸ] before /o, u, w/ [x] before /ɯ/ all allophones become their voiced counterparts when following a vowel
[j]	semivowel	j palatal approximant	(y)
[w]	semivowel	w labio-velar approximant	(w)
[N]	final consonant	ŋ velar nasal	ㅇ (ng)