A Study on the Perceptual Patterns of Korean Vowels ‘어-오-우’ and ‘여-요-유’ among Chinese Learners of Korean

This study examines the perceptual patterns of Korean vowels /어/-/오/-/우/ and /여/-/요/-/유/ among Chinese learners of Korean, focusing on how these patterns vary according to Chinese learners’ Korean-exposure experiences and syllabic environments. To achieve this, 12 beginning learners with limited exposure to Korean and 12 advanced learners with extensive exposure to Korean were tested on 96 stimuli. The analysis revealed that Chinese learners’ perception of /ㅜ/, /ㅕ/, /ㅠ/ significantly improved with increased exposure to Korean, while there was no statistically significant improvement for /ㅓ/, /ㅗ/, and /ㅛ/. Additionally, learners showed improved perception of vowels preceding nasal codas and velar stops /ㄱ/ with more exposure to Korean, whereas their perception did not significantly differ for vowels preceding labial, alveolar obstruent, or liquid codas. The study also found that the difficulty of vowel perception varied depending on the phonetic features of the vowels in different syllabic environments. These results indicate that increased exposure to Korean does not uniformly enhance vowel perception among Chinese learners. Moreover, the impact of syllabic context on the perception of Korean vowels needs to be further investigated, considering the phonetic characteristics of vowels.