Re: What is gemination? What are geminates?

On Tue, 7 Nov 2000, D Tse wrote:

> >Korean, in Roman transcription, has pp, tt et al. in initial position (as
> >well as medial), but the pronunciation isn't clear to me.
>
> That represents a glottalised consonant (constricted throat?) in Korean I
> think.
>
> Teach yourself books sometimes refer to it as double strength, maybe hence
> the transcription.
>
> Note that I'm definitely not a Korean expert, however.
No, that's *definitely* not glottalized, but tensed obstruents.  Under
http://yhl.freeservers.com/links2.html#LANG I have a link to a Korean
language website that has audio clips, which is probably the fastest way
to figure out what's going on as far as learning what it sounds like.
"Double strength" actually isn't a bad way to put it if you don't know
the terminology (I didn't for the longest time).  Sorry I can't pass on
the link directly--must go to classes soon!

YHL