Korean Job Discussion Forums

[waynehead]

...of English words that they don't realize are cognates/loan words? It can be frustrating/funny. I've had it happen with "yogurt" and "showmanship." It's syo-man-sip, she said...

[Hyeon Een]

When speaking English? Yes, but usually because I didn't use the standard N.American pronunciation and used British or Aussie pronunciation. Not because they wanted me to speak Konglish-English (except when kidding around)

When speaking Korean? Yes, because the English way is incorrect when using loan words in Korean =) (e.g. "Orange juice" is wrong, "oran-gee-joo-suh" is correct).

Oh and I guess when I taught little kids they probably tried to make me use the Korean pronunciation when speaking English, but I don't recall any specific examples. But I guess something close would be a girl insisting to me that her English name was "Rola" rather than "Laura".

[whatever]

Hell, I got corrected today by a class on the use of the word 'baguette'...when they start correcting your pronunciation of loan words loaned to English via French, etc.....you know the fun has started. They then 'told' on me to one of the Korean teachers that I was using Korean in class.

[KOREAN_MAN]

FYI, the word 'ideology' is pronounced ee-deh-ohl-lo-ghi (이데올로기).

[reactionary]

i once corrected a student who kept saying "sweet paydo" instead of "potato." I corrected him, then korean staff told me "no, it's right. in america they pronounce it "sweet podado.""

Dan Quayle school 'o english

[pest2]

[reactionary]

koreans actually pronounce some other languages' words better than americans though, or at least i've noticed that with spanish. two examples off the top of my head are coyote and rodeo.

very isolated incidents, however.

[RACETRAITOR]

Some of my friends are professional voice actors, and they've had all sorts of jobs. One job, they were supposed to read the slogan of a company or something, and the clients were annoyed with how they pronounced "all." They were forced to say it like a Korean would pronounce it, more like "orl." I'm not even sure why you'd want to pay an overpaid voice actor to fake a Korean accent like that.

[esetters21]

[reactionary]

what i mean is, have an american say "coyote"

then have a korean say "coyote"

the korean will probably closer to the original mexican spanish word, coyote.

but yeah, you're right. they probably want to say it the incorrect american way, but the word has been hangulized differently.

[ED209]

Get it sometimes. Confused a kid today by telling them it's Rome not Roma.

[indiercj]

[Boodleheimer]

i actually think Korean is way better than Chinese in this regard. in Chinese, they take the English names of pretty much all countries and cities and approximate it into Chinese pronunciation. in Korea, at least they take the non-English pronunciation of some places into account.

[pest2]

[ajuma]

I once had a student who said "tomater" and "potater"!! I wondered where her foreign teacher was from!!