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2009-08-09T21:30:11Z

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{| align="right" class="wikitable" style="margin-left:10px"
|-
|+ '''Korean Vowel Harmony'''
|-
!rowspan=2|Positive/"light"/Yang Vowels
| ㅏ (a) || ㅑ (ya) || ㅗ (o) || ㅛ (yo)
|-
| ㅐ (ae) || ㅘ (wa) || ㅚ (oe) || ㅙ (wae)
|-
!rowspan=2|Negative/"heavy"/Yin Vowels
| ㅓ (eo) || ㅕ (yeo) || ㅜ (u) || ㅠ (yu)
|-
| ㅔ (e) || ㅝ (wo) || ㅟ (wi) || ㅞ (we)
|-
! Neutral/Centre Vowels
| ㅡ (eu) || ㅣ (i)||colspan=2| ㅢ (ui)
|-
|}
Traditionally, the Korean language has had strong [[vowel harmony]]; that is, in pre-modern Korean, as in most Altaic languages, not only did the inflectional and derivational affixes (such as [[postposition]]s) change in accordance to the main root vowel, but native words also adhered to vowel harmony. It is not as prevalent in modern usage, although it remains strong in [[onomatopoeia]], [[adjective]]s and [[adverb]]s, [[interjections]], and [[Grammatical conjugation|conjugation]]. There are also other traces of vowel harmony in Korean.

There are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive, negative, and neutral. The vowel eu is considered partially a neutral and negative vowel. The vowel classes loosely follow the negative and positive vowels; they also follow orthography. Exchanging positive vowels with negative vowels usually creates different nuances of meaning, with positive vowels sounding diminutive and negative vowels sounding crude.

Some examples:

*'''Onomatopoeia:'''
** 퐁당퐁당 (pongdangpongdang) and 풍덩풍덩 (pungdeongpungdeong), light and heavy water splashing
*'''Emphasised adjectives:'''
** 노랗다 (norata) means plain yellow, while its negative, 누렇다 (nureota) means very yellow
** 파랗다 (parata) means plain blue, while its negative, 퍼렇다 (peoreota) means deep blue
*'''Particles at the end of verbs:'''
** 잡다 (japda) (to catch) → 잡았다 (Jabatda) (caught)
** 접다 (jeopda) (to fold) → 접었다 (Jeobeotda) (folded)
*'''Interjections:'''
** 아이고 (aigo) and 어이구 (eoigu) expressing surprise, discomfort or sympathy
** 아하 (aha) and 어허 (eoheo) expressing sudden realization and mild objection, respectively
[[Category:Vowels]]

Vowel harmony - Revision history

Mstrum: Copied from wikipedia, needs to be reformated