Korean Job Discussion Forums

gmarthews · Joined: 20 Sep 2005

I was wondering. Seeing as Korean is a phonetic language, do Koreans have different accents? And if they do (as I would suppose), how do they write the words which they say differently?

If you say a word differently because (say) you live on the east coast, do you write it down differently, with a different vowel symbol (for example).

If so, is this confusing, and if not do those with the accent feel uunhappy about this?

peppermint · Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 9:31 am Post subject:

There are very definitely different accents in Korea. Most obviously (and confusingly for the newbie esler) where people from Seoul would say "Ne", people from further south would say "Ye".

As far as I know, spelling is based on the standard (Seoul) accent, and isn't normally changed according to region.

There's a lot of pressure to have the right accent there. I learned most of my Korean in a smallish town down South, so when I moved to Seoul, I got mocked by friends for sounding like a bumpkin

gmarthews · Joined: 20 Sep 2005

Does that not cause confusion if the spelling is all based on the Seoul accent?

How do children from other areas with different accents learn to read?

peppermint · Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 11:26 am Post subject:

Someone raising kids there would probably be able to give a better answer than me, but I don't see how it would cause trouble learning to read so much as trouble spelling.

Neil · Joined: 02 Jan 2004 Location: Tokyo

I don't see why the spelling would be different, English has scores of different accents yet we all spell the same.

From my experience Seoul accents are quite high, Ganwondo accents sound like the speaker smokes 60 a day (which to be fair a lot do) and Jeju has such a strong accent that native Korean speakers stuggle to understand it....indeed I believe that they teach 'standard Korean' in Jeju schools so the locals can be understood by tourists better.

Atavistic · Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 1:45 pm Post subject:

adeline · Joined: 19 Nov 2007

I don't think accents are as varied as they are in english, likely because english has been spread so far for so long. I do agree with the other poster above though, sometimes vowels are switched. An example my korean prof just gave today is that some people in the south say 너가 instead of 네가 when they mean you. Shes given tons of other examples but sadly I can't recall any others.

CentralCali · Joined: 17 May 2007

ALL spoken languages are phonetic languages. Also, there are plenty of different accents/dialects in Korean. Check out the Ethnologue entry on Korean.

ernie · Joined: 05 Aug 2006 Location: asdfghjk

koreans like to think that hangeul is some magical writing system that is 100% accurate but the truth of the matter is that it is no better than any other phonetic system... they only think this because compared to the retarded chinese and japanese systems, hangeul is a miracle!

the only reason it seems more phonetic than english is because hangeul has only really been in use for about 60 years now, whereas english has been using roman characters for more than ten times as long!

adeline · Joined: 19 Nov 2007

another thing that differs widely is stresses (ㅆㄸㄲ...) For some words in the main dialect you don't use them at all, but in other areas they are always used.

adeline · Joined: 19 Nov 2007

Natalia · Joined: 10 Mar 2006

adeline · Joined: 19 Nov 2007

It may seem confusing, but really when you are fluent context is everything, so comprehension is not really a problem. But ya, with english things are quite varied, no only with or vs. our and s vs. z but there are tons and tons of words that have different meanings or are no longer used in one or the other dialect. Even in the states though, if someone says "Im so thirsty, I want to go get some pop" you understand what they mean. It is only jeju that the accents are too hard for most koreans to understand (could this be compared to pikey english? I can't catch a word) In addition I would guess that all academic writings are written using the main dialect's spellings and favoured words.

n�fara · Joined: 14 Jul 2007 Location: The Island

Not only does Jeju have a different accent, there's actually a whole different dialect going on down here. Schools do teach the standard Korea, though.

If you're interested, and for what it's worth, check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_dialect

They have some examples of the different words and where they came from.

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

One of my phone English students born in Gangneung told me he did his best to change his accent so he didn't sound like he was from there.