Abstract
The onomatopoeia in Korean are characterized by several features. Probably the most evident one are the phonetic features – sound symbolism and vowel harmony.
Korean onomatopoeia can be frequently observed in specific types of texts, e.g. comic books, children books, newspaper headlines, electronic communication, poetry and fiction especially while in other texts, such as scientific and administrative, are very rare. In each type of texts special features and tendencies of the use of Korean onomatopoeia can be observed, e.g. plain or reduplicated onomatopoetic stem and high frequency of variant in Korean comic books etc.
Invariants are mostly formed by the phonetic means of sound symbolism – vowel and consonant shift, and vowel harmony is usually employed. The shift occurs between so-called bright vowels (e.g. a, o) and dark vowels (e.g. ŏ, u), and plain – reinforced – aspirated consonant respectively.
Sound symbolism of consonants in Korean onomatopoeia occurs partially in the coda too.