Korean Job Discussion Forums

[greedy_bones]

Sorry about this post's lack of hangul, but my pirated version of XP doesn't include far east language packs.

Any time I see an English word with the letter a or o with the original sound of dog or law, the corresponding hangul is never used. For example talk is always spelled toke, and saw is spelled sowu. I've heard many explanations that don't really make sense, like "there is no ah in Korean" or "It's the Japanese's fault." To me, it seems like 4 in Korean sounds exactly like saw in English, so why is it so hard to recognize the sound actually exists in English and that A never says oh?

I can understand strange spellings of letters like z, v, f, l and r which either don't exist in Korean or change depending on their position, but ah is in the alphabet.

[GreenlightmeansGO]

The 'ah' you are speaking of sounds nothing like the 'aw' in 'saw'. It sounds like when someone suddenly realizes something and says 'Aaah, I understand!'

The way Korean is structured, you will find words like...스포츠 - sports, but it is pronounced seu-poh-cheu. The rules of Hangeul don't allow you to place the /s/ and /p/ sounds together.

[greedy_bones]

[GreenlightmeansGO]

I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but 사 sounds nothing like 'saw'. The 아 sound is like /a:/ for arm

Think of a Bostonian saying 'car' without the post-vocalic 'r', that would ryhme with 사.

'Saw' has the same sound as 'awe' (I only have a Cambridge dictionary, which gives me British phonemes), both of which cannot be generated in Hangeul.

You may be thinking of 서, which is romanized as 'seo', but that isn't exactly right either, but it is closer. I can understand you thinking that sounds like 'saw' (with more of a Brit accent, though).

The gist of it is that some vowel sounds cannot possibly be replicated with hangeul.

[greedy_bones]

I guess we can agree to disagree on how 'saw' sounds, but to me, saw, arm, and sawrm sound pretty close.

I wouldn't have too much of a problem if in Hangeul, they spelled saw, 'seo', but I just don't get where the 'o' sound is coming from. To me, '닭' sounds more like talk than toke does, and '사' or even '서' are closer than '소'.

[Css]

You must have a very bizarre regional accent if where youre from saw sounds like 사.

[greedy_bones]

Nah, I'm just from the pacific northwest. Saw doesn't sound exactly like 사, but it sounds much more like that than it sounds like so. I guess the closest sound I can think of would be something like sa-eu.

[jajdude]

How about the hangul for "hot dog" -- the "hot" is close to the English, but the "dog"... well, you know.

[santafly]

banana - the middle a is the difficult a sound for Koreans - no possible hangeul adaptation - also, the total lack of inflection.........

[kotakji]

We also need to remember that the regional dialects in Korea are if anything even more diverse then between English speakers. I would have agreed with Greedy-bones' interpretation also, but that might just be related to my wife's Jeonju accent. To me the "a" in "are" has too much of a deep throat originating sound to be the 'a' in 사 which I perceive to be very airy short lived sound. But to each his own

[Ya-ta Boy]

[Hyeon Een]

[kotakji]

I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

[Carla]

[suadente]