Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Adventurer]

For some reason, I find Korean to be a very hard language to pronounce. Everyone tells me I am pronouncing things wrong. It is hard for me to really distinguish the difference in tones. It is easier for me to pick on the difference in sounds when it comes to European languages or Semitic languages. What is it about Korean that many foreigners have difficulty with? I can understand it a lot easier than I can pronounce the language. I am not sure how to overcome this problem. It seems better not to even attempt at learning the language, but just to comprehend it somewhat.

[ajgeddes]

I think what can cause problems is the vowel combinations. Also, the emphasis on vowels.

[retrogress]

I'm fluent in mandarin (really--I scored level 6 on the HSK). After 4 years in korea, I am convinced that it is a much more difficult language than Chinese. Not the written part, mind you. It's speaking and listening that are the most difficult. And, as you point out, speaking is often more difficult than listening (as it is in most second languages--think of your students who can understand what you say, but can't utter a complete sentence).

I have always attributed the problem to:
0) the number of homophones and the number of pronunciations that are not found in English
1) the way Korean is slurred together (as English often is)
2) the fact that many words are not spoken as they are phonetically written (as in English--think "Wanna" instead of "want to"
3) the fact that there are different ways of saying something based on who is being spoken too. The result is that you hear different phrases in different settings, further complicating things.
4) mashiseyo, mashida, mat-da, mashiketda and words like this are so similar that it is overwhelming

I don't study Korean which is THE reason why I can't say much more than "be quiet", "I'm going home" and "do you have any garbage bags?" But the fact that it is truly rare for a foreigner to be able to speak it anywhere near fluency definitely says something.

If you really want to learn, I suggest you make your next job somewhere small townish, get a job at a public school where nobody speaks English and/or marry a local. I suggest 1 and 2.

[spliff]

Try speaking w/out moving your lips.

[ryouga013]

It's also because even if you say something right, what is right to one person isn't right to another. In Korea, unless you pronounce something 100% correctly, you have mispronounced it and there is no way of telling you how to fix it... This is a major reason I haven't been working at learning Korean. If I try to say anything in Korean, students will laugh at my attempts to help them if it is incorrect AND if it is correct...

Me: Doppokki
Students: hahahahahahaha
Me: what? did I say it wrong?
Students: No, that's why it funny hahahaha

Great motivators, the Koreans.

[nautilus]

Pronunciation is not the problem. its them.

How do I know? because I refuse to repeat myself anymore. Its amazing how soon they get what you said, first time, one time.

Their typical kneejerk cluelessness is just an act because they're momentarily stuck for words at the sight of a foreigner. They heard.

[fustiancorduroy]

...

[samd]

[aka Dave]

I truly believe the only way to overcome this problem is massive, and I mean frigging massive input and practice.

http://www.hawaii.edu/uhpress/mp3/klear/

So you download all that, get the textbooks, and listen to hundreds of hours of Korean. I've been totally slacking on my Korean study ever since my seniors came back from their student teaching, but really it's all about the time put in.

You need one and probably better three hours a day listening to Korean. Authentic Korean. It *will* help your prononciation, and there's no way other than doing. Just today I was giving a final and giving instructions in Korean, and a student said I spoke korean well. Nope. I don't. I suck at Korean. BUT. I've listened to hundred of hours of Korean and certain phrases I can pronounce really well, simply out of hours and hours of practice.

It's really like going to the gym. If you're not moving weights, or if you're not *doing* the language, you're not going to make progress.

[Eedoryeong]

Korean *can* be a very easy language to learn to pronounce perfectly.

It really, really can be. I swear.

I came to Korean having previously been, among other things, a singer learning to pronounce many other languages. I've been pretty good at catching a lot of the other ones, too.

I don't know if this is your problem or not, but as a North American English-speaker coming to a new language one of the first things I had to learn was how easy it is for me to compromise vowels (those vowels that need to be kept pure and simple, even at the ends) by letting them change into some other nearby vowel towards the end. English speakers do a lot of that.

Knowing and correcting that can be a challenge for a native English speaker if they've never had to listen to themselves that way, or dissect exactly what it is they've been doing for years. Think of how many different North American areas you can make yourself sound like you're from, just by altering the way you say, 'hi'.

I've found that singing with a good choir has been the best reinforcer of vowel purity for practising Korean. It really honks if you don't have the vowels quite right, and you have constant coaching there (in the form of your conductor repeating back to you the vowel you're supposed to be singing).

With the exceptions of the 의 which sounds like a Russian vowel I had to learn (I get by in Korean doing a sequence of 으that is done kind of in the throat, followed by a shorter 이 )(that changes to 에 in Korean singing by the way, and in some regions, they actually take the sung mutation of the possessive and use it in spoken language! But it's nice to have that in the wings so-to-speak, ready for use) and the 으 sound which really is like the French 'euh' sound, my humble observation is that most of the vowels in Korean really are as pure (read: unaltering, not compromised by cutoffs) as Italian vowels.

Having said that I used to be accused of sounding too severe or austere in pronunciation, like a coach that doesn't know when to turn it off, but I added the Korean style of cut-offs and mouth laziness and my Korean became as natural sounding in speech as it is now in singing. But underneath that adopted inflection is a basic foundation of pure vowel pronunciation, and chucking out the accidental wandering into other vowels, which is, I think, a totally English thing to do.

[aka Dave]

no,no, no, Korean vowels are nothing like Italian vowels, which are mostly pure. I mean,really, utter bullshit has to be addressed.

Italian vowels are phonetic. By that I mean, when you're reading an Italian text "a" will always and I mean almost always be pronounced as "ah".There are exceptions, but they're rare.

For the most part they stay the same. Korean vowels are all over the place. It's too late to explain this stufff but let's take the verb ta da. ( buse ta da,take a bus). ta da beomes tay yo(in the yo form) or with Ha da (to do) Ha sey yo(polite, honorific) and Hey yo(polite). Again, here we see in a basic verb the shifiting of vowels. UNLIKE ITALIAN.

. This doesn't happen in Italian except in extremely rare cases. 99 percent of the time the Italian a is "ah" the Italian o is "oh" the Italian i is "ee" etc.

Stop the insanity.

[Eedoryeong]

[JustJohn]

[JustJohn]

On a side note, I said "al-ma-ye-yo" to a korean and they didn't understand. When they got it they corrected me --> "aur-ma-aey-oh."

I think I was pronouncing it as it was written but they didn't understand unless it was more slurred together.

[Cheonmunka]

Take words slower and don't speed them up for the sake of racey speech. Enunciate each syllable clearly and slowly.