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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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pest2
Joined: 01 Jun 2005
Location: Vancouver, Canada
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 Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 7:42 pm Post subject: Re: Do you ever have Koreans correct your pronunciation? |
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| kiwiduncan wrote: |
| pest2 wrote: |
Korean language is annoying. Most languages are compatible with other languages when it comes to writing and speaking, but Korean is pretty closed and rigid... ironic thats how the people and cuture are too. |
I don't really know what you mean here by 'closed and rigid'. To me it seems to be a very fluid and rapidly changing language. It's had hundreds of years of outside linguistic influence from Chinese, Japanese, English and other languages. I heard that 10% of modern Korean is English, and then there's the all the borrowing from Chinese.
I'd say a better example of a closed and rigid langauge is French. The French government even has a department dedicated to 'protecting' French from outside influences. |
Alot of Korean (I heard someone say 60%) words came from Chinese. But the pronunciation is never the same. Ex: Shan, Chinese, san, Korean. And the grammar and syntax is night and day. When Chinese people try to read Korean written using hanja, it looks completely nonsensical to them.
French is closed and rigid, but in a different way. I actually taught English in France. The problem (for teaching) is that they wont adopt any non-French words.. However, insofar as teaching goes, there are plenty of cognates to use because a pretty big chunk of French later became a pretty big chunk of English anyway.
However, French students, when learning English, can easily make, for example, the "rrrrr" sound whereas such a sound doesnt exist in French. Can Koreans make the "rrrrrr" sound so easily?? NOOO! LLLRLRLRLLRL is all they can do.
Also, a seperate point, French and other romance languages dont have as many narrowing-rules about which letters and which kinds of letters can be used together to make words. English has even fewer. Korean wont allow, for example, an ending that has two consonant sounds together (like st or ps). So, if Koreans want to write, "street" in hanguel, they have to write, seu teu lit. In French, street is just street.
Another problem for Korean is the banmal... except for Japanese, what other language that crapp has-yo? And that "neun" non-functional adjective-like thing they put in the sentence...
Korean language and hanguel writing, for all the genius Koreans say it has in its design, was not made to be syntactically, phonically, and grammatically compatible with other languages.
Thats why I think its interesting Korean language has alot of the same flaws as Korea itself... |
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indiercj
Joined: 30 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 8:48 pm Post subject: Re: Do you ever have Koreans correct your pronunciation? |
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| pest2 wrote: |
| kiwiduncan wrote: |
| pest2 wrote: |
Korean language is annoying. Most languages are compatible with other languages when it comes to writing and speaking, but Korean is pretty closed and rigid... ironic thats how the people and cuture are too. |
I don't really know what you mean here by 'closed and rigid'. To me it seems to be a very fluid and rapidly changing language. It's had hundreds of years of outside linguistic influence from Chinese, Japanese, English and other languages. I heard that 10% of modern Korean is English, and then there's the all the borrowing from Chinese.
I'd say a better example of a closed and rigid langauge is French. The French government even has a department dedicated to 'protecting' French from outside influences. |
Alot of Korean (I heard someone say 60%) words came from Chinese. But the pronunciation is never the same. Ex: Shan, Chinese, san, Korean. And the grammar and syntax is night and day. When Chinese people try to read Korean written using hanja, it looks completely nonsensical to them.
French is closed and rigid, but in a different way. I actually taught English in France. The problem (for teaching) is that they wont adopt any non-French words.. However, insofar as teaching goes, there are plenty of cognates to use because a pretty big chunk of French later became a pretty big chunk of English anyway.
However, French students, when learning English, can easily make, for example, the "rrrrr" sound whereas such a sound doesnt exist in French. Can Koreans make the "rrrrrr" sound so easily?? NOOO! LLLRLRLRLLRL is all they can do.
Also, a seperate point, French and other romance languages dont have as many narrowing-rules about which letters and which kinds of letters can be used together to make words. English has even fewer. Korean wont allow, for example, an ending that has two consonant sounds together (like st or ps). So, if Koreans want to write, "street" in hanguel, they have to write, seu teu lit. In French, street is just street.
Another problem for Korean is the banmal... except for Japanese, what other language that crapp has-yo? And that "neun" non-functional adjective-like thing they put in the sentence...
Korean language and hanguel writing, for all the genius Koreans say it has in its design, was not made to be syntactically, phonically, and grammatically compatible with other languages.
Thats why I think its interesting Korean language has alot of the same flaws as Korea itself... |
 Sorry. But I can't help it. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:46 pm Post subject: |
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Back home in California, we say coyote and rodeo the same way as it is in Mexican Spanish (who'd've thought?).
Hangeul wasn't designed, exactly, to be phonetic. It represents the language's phonemes and is designed to do that for one language: Korean. The change in pronunciation of the loan words from Chinese makes sense, as we do the same in English with Chinese loan words. Chinese is a tonal languge, after all. |
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LUCRETIA
Joined: 20 Jun 2007
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| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:57 pm Post subject: |
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Me: Alright kids, what can you see in this picture?
Kids: Lions! Monkeys! The JEW!
Me: What? The Jew?
Kids: Yes, teacher, the JEW!
Me: ????????
(Actually, its a picture of two people walking in the jungle )
Me: Alright, kids, so what's your favourite food?
Kids: BIJA!
Me: ???????? |
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Natalia
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:10 pm Post subject: |
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| reactionary wrote: |
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 |
Having being raised in countries ranging from England to Australia to half of Asia, I have anything but an American accent. I had a lot of trouble with students with "twenny" (twenty), "beddar" (better) and so on.....
Not a single day of my contract went by without a Korean telling me not to pronounce the letter 'T', because Americans don't. 
One of my kindergarten girls was screamed at more than once for saying, "pretty," instead of, "Preeddy."
I have also had rather large disputes with Koreans about the pronunciation of both 'pizza' (peeeeza) and 'Coca-Cola' (Koka-Koe-LAARRRRR"). |
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dogshed
Joined: 28 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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| mj roach wrote: |
| ajuma - maybe when we say 'an apple', it usually sounds like 'en apple' but not 'un apple'. |
How do you say en? I remember my grade school teacher in
Tulsa, Oklahoma spending about an hour teaching us the difference
between pin and pen. |
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ajgeddes
Joined: 28 Apr 2004
Location: Yongsan
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:38 am Post subject: |
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| dogshed wrote: |
| mj roach wrote: |
| ajuma - maybe when we say 'an apple', it usually sounds like 'en apple' but not 'un apple'. |
How do you say en? I remember my grade school teacher in
Tulsa, Oklahoma spending about an hour teaching us the difference
between pin and pen. |
For many people, there is a clear distinction between pin and pen to the point where there is no room for confusion. |
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doggyji
Joined: 21 Feb 2006
Location: Toronto - Hamilton - Vineland - St. Catherines
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 1:12 am Post subject: |
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| pest2 wrote: |
| Korean language is annoying. Most languages are compatible with other languages when it comes to writing and speaking, but Korean is pretty closed and rigid... ironic thats how the people and culture are too. |
| pest2 wrote: |
| Also, a separate point, French and other romance languages dont have as many narrowing-rules about which letters and which kinds of letters can be used together to make words. English has even fewer. Korean wont allow, for example, an ending that has two consonant sounds together (like st or ps). So, if Koreans want to write, "street" in hanguel, they have to write, seu teu lit. In French, street is just street. |
Now I�m just curious what you think of Chinese and Japanese which aren�t any more compatible with other languages than Korean when it comes to writing and speaking. Closed, rigid and annoying as hell? For writing Romance and Germanic languages for example, both Chinese and Japanese are not any better than Korean.
"McDonald" in three East Asian languages for a starter:
Chinese: 麦当劳 (Mai-Dang-Lao)
Japanese: マクドナルド (Ma-Ku-Do-Na-Ru-Do)
Korean: 맥도날드 (Mac-Do-Nahl-Deu)
| pest2 wrote: |
Another problem for Korean is the banmal... except for Japanese, what other language that crapp has-yo? And that "neun" non-functional adjective-like thing they put in the sentence... |
If you think the honorific system is crap, then it's your taste. As for the subjective particle 은/는/이/가�being non-functional unfortunately, you are just revealing your own sheer ignorance in that matter. I mean it. |
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mrgiles
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 1:51 am Post subject: |
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sigh. in australia we make 태권도 thaikwondo, 대우 daywoo (pronouncing the w), 현대 hiyunday.
what about what we do with other words in english? do we pronounce television the way the original words would have been pronounced? kimono? siesta?
and why, why, why is that drink called tea???
chinese: cha
korean: cha
hindi (i'm pretty sure): chai
and so on.
so a pom heard a chinese person say "cha" and thought oh! TEA!!!??
all languages do this kind of thing. that's why they're called languages. |
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Pak Yu Man
Joined: 02 Jun 2005
Location: The Ida galaxy
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 2:47 am Post subject: |
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| Natalia wrote: |
Having being raised in countries ranging from England to Australia to half of Asia, I have anything but an American accent. I had a lot of trouble with students with "twenny" (twenty), "beddar" (better) and so on.....
Not a single day of my contract went by without a Korean telling me not to pronounce the letter 'T', because Americans don't.
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Actually N.Americans pronounce the t. Next time tell your student "the t sound changes to a d sound when the t is between two voiced vowels".
That'll shut them the hell up. |
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Fresh Prince
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: The glorious nation of Korea
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:12 am Post subject: |
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| Coyote is actually a mispronunciation of the original Nahuatl word that is pronounced, "Cojotl." The Spanish language can't pronounce the letter, "J" so they changed it to a, "Y." |
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Alyallen
Joined: 29 Mar 2004
Location: The 4th Greatest Place on Earth = Jeonju!!!
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:17 am Post subject: |
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| mrgiles wrote: |
sigh. in australia we make 태권도 thaikwondo, 대우 daywoo (pronouncing the w), 현대 hiyunday.
what about what we do with other words in english? do we pronounce television the way the original words would have been pronounced? kimono? siesta?
and why, why, why is that drink called tea???
chinese: cha
korean: cha
hindi (i'm pretty sure): chai
and so on.
so a pom heard a chinese person say "cha" and thought oh! TEA!!!??
all languages do this kind of thing. that's why they're called languages. |
That sort of moving away from the point of the thread. The point is that an English word such as radio is said to be "wrong" by a Korean who might pronounce it "ladio". Who in the hell corrects a Native speaker in their language if they are not a native or near fluent speaker? (That's a rhetorical question before we deviate even more from the topic....) |
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OiGirl
Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Location: Hoke-y-gun
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:27 am Post subject: |
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| LUCRETIA wrote: |
Me: Alright kids, what can you see in this picture?
Kids: Lions! Monkeys! The JEW!
Me: What? The Jew?
Kids: Yes, teacher, the JEW!
Me: ????????
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At the Itaewon tourist information booth:
Me: Where can I go to see some wild birds in Korea.
Chick: There are no wild birds in Korea. The Jews! The Jews!
Me: WTF?  Some kind of perverse specicide perpetuated by Jews...  |
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mrgiles
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:11 am Post subject: |
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alyallen, they'd say "radio", using their sound that's more like an r than an l, and use the short vowel sound for the a, but point taken ^^
when will i stick to the point?? ever in my life?? --,.-- |
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mrgiles
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:13 am Post subject: |
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oh. is radio really an english word? i mean was it first coined in the english language?
damn there i go off topic again. when will i learn? |
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