Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Mashimaro]

What are the keys to speaking korean as a korean does.
Correct me if I am wrong, but koreans seem not to open there mouth very much when they speak.

Besides just practising pronunciation, is there anything else I can do to make my korean sound more natural?

[Ilsanman]

I found if you speak fast, you can even make errors and be understood.

If you are a man, be sure to mumble. They are used to it.

[Universalis]

ONe of the things I've noticed about non-Koreans who speak Korean well is that they really exaggerate their enunciation. I mean... you can see the effort they're making to speak Korean the way it should be spoken.


I tend to mumble - in both English and Korean - so it's tough for me. I know this sounds like I'm stating the obvious... but you really have to make a conscious effort to pronounce things correctly.

Good luck!

Brian

[Tony Danza's Houseguest]

Westerners (by westerners, of course, I mean me, since I haven't seen this in other people because I never tried to notice it before I came to Korea) tend to keep their tongue a little more to the middle of their mouth when they speak, while Koreans (by Koreans I mean the kids in my class that can't pronounce the word "ball" like I think it's supposed to be pronounced) tend to keep their tongue a little higher in their mouth. I think that this is really a key to good pronunciation in English, so it's probably the same in Korean.

Then again, my Korean ability is crap, so take all I say with a grain of salt and a pint of Guinness.

[kangnamdragon]

[cutter-saram]

do a lot of choking and phlegm scraping. also try to remember to do everything in an excessively loud manner.

[Crois]

Eat two tons of Kimchi a day!!!

[pet lover]

If you can't say something nice........

[Zyzyfer]

Uh, I just try to imagine the sound of the word in my head(of course it's in English). I don't follow any sort of rules to guarantee that something will sound a certain way, because some Korean words look one way, but if you Romanized them exactly, they'd lose the "real" sound. Words like jjinja(really), gure/gooray(okay), those are words that don't sound quite like they should when I say them, yet seem to be acceptably pronounced.

For the record, my Korean is apparently oily. Any idea what the hell that means?

[batman]

If you are a man, mumble.
If you are a woman, whine.

[kiwiboy_nz_99]

A lot of sarcastic and not so helpful "advice" from people who are obviously not bothered with it, or stuggling.

For me there's no secret except listening and practicing. If you have a Korean friend who can be bothered, sit and go through a list of words you want to work on, have them say the word, then you repeat, over and over till they are satisfied with that word, then go on to the next one.

[Yangkho]

I've found that the first step is to be able to speak Konglish well. If you can imitate the way Konglish speakers speak English, you can definitely speak Korean with a good accent because, of course, Konglish is created by pronouncing English with only the sounds available in Korean. Try your Konglish out on some of your classes and if it sounds really good, if it rings true, you'll get a great response from the students.

However, I have known foreigners who are proficient in Korean, and quite a few of them had horrible accents. I think what they had right was the intonation. I'm sure it's the same problem in Japanese. We don't think of English as a musical language (compared to our romance language cousins), but what we do with our voices to change the meaning of a simple sentence in so many ways, the Koreans do with enough verb endings to fill a book and then some.

Imagine it this way. You work at 7-Eleven back home. A foreign guy comes in, picks up a liter of milk and says to you, "I will buy this? I want to buy this?" You're puzzled as hell and you think to yourself, why is he asking me. What he's really trying to say is, of course, I want to buy this, but his intonation is all wrong.

That's what Koreans sometimes hear from us. But I do believe that yes, there are plenty of Koreans who just don't want to hear their language from your lips.

[Mashimaro]

[peppermint]

Not 100% sure but when a girl says anything about a man is "oily" it usually means greasy, too slick..maybe a little sleazy.

[Mashimaro]