Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Mashimaro]

learn to read korean, it won't take long and you won't feel like so much of an idiot when you can actually order food for yourself.

[crazylemongirl]

I agree. I find myself rehanguelising romansied words so that I can say them

[keithinkorea]

What also sucks is screwing English up by 'hangulafying' it. The amount of times I watch I flick on the telly and there is a film -halfway through- and it takes me a good five minutes to figure out what the 'hangulified' version is supposed to say in daft Konglish!

Hangul is very easy to learn -though pronouncing some words takes practice- but is not suitable for many 'foreign' words. Heck even ordering a pizza in pizzahut can be mindboggling with all the extra ee's and uu's you've got to make to make it sensible to the Korean staff.

My Korean is basic but nonsense Konglish on occasion confuses me a lot.

[little mixed girl]

there's nothing wrong with romanji, it's just too many ppl make up their own systems.
heck, even i hate seeing 'ou' or 'oo' romanized with an accent over it in japanese. or 'tsu' written as 'du'...

[Cthulhu]

I agree as well to using the Korean text. I make more mistakes trying to figure out Romanized Korean than reading Korean in the first place. Given a choice of reading the Korean text or Romanized text I choose the former every time. Less chance of making an error.

God knows English is screwed up enough on its own without needing to screw up other languages in the process.

[Mashimaro]

[jajdude]

Agreed... hangulization and romanization both were like puzzles to figure out sometimes.

Rush Hour = Russia war? .... for example

Another good one was "North Face".... in Hangul I thought it was "No Space" till I saw the small English nearby on the ad.

[Cedar]

Couldn't agree more. I hate romanization and I cringe when I hear foreigners mispronouncing words drastically because they just read the romanization and pronounce in a dominantly English way... the best example being the 'a' as in Busan, which should be an 'ah' like father, but they say it like the 'a' in 'Ann'. Actually I heard someone the other day say that city name as "Bus-ann" but I think that he was joking.

[Son Deureo!]

Every once in a while, I still catch myself mispronouncing a word because I learned it from a romanized phrasebook before I learned how to read hangeul. If you can't read hangeul yet, just learn it. Learn it now.

[Yangkho]

I hate being pounced upon by adult students when I don't know the exact Romanization for Korean names. Go easy on me, Mr. Choi/Choy/Ch'oi/Ch'oy. I didn't know your name was Joon Suk/Jun Seok/Choon Sok/Chun Seok.

There was a Korean politician, by the name ��, who spelled his name "Chough", as in dough, or though, not as in cough, through, or tough.

[Mashimaro]

Learning to read and use basic sentences is so empowering. Once you stop relying on korean co-workers, friends/girlfriends becomes so much less stressful.

Having a korean hold your hand the whole time might seem easier on the surface but I usually found trying to explain them in english what I needed help with, was more frustrating than learning to say it in korean!

As an added bonus you can turn the tides on people leaching english from you and start leaching korean from them.. though you may find the one's happy to speak english to you may not so willingly return the favour of speaking korean to you.. I've been pretty lucky in that regard, all my friends have seemed happy to indulge my stuttering, shambolic version of korean.

[chronicpride]

[jajdude]

But it is necessary internationally and for tourists. Those living in Korea more than a few months should learn to read Hangul.

[thorin]

I agree that if you stay here for more than a week or so you should learn how to read but I hope you dont yell at me if I romanize something on here. My hangul typing is really slow and it's totally not worth it to switch back and forth for one or two words. I think it looks kinda silly when people do that.

[Sleepy in Seoul]

I don't understand why more people don't learn �ѱ�. It only took me 2 hours to learn the Korean alphabet - a lot longer to use it , and I'm still not fast enough to read all the subtitles before they disappear - but it does make life so much easier. I had a workmate once who insisted on pronouncing Daegu - �뱸 - as Day-goo, and they lived here for a whole year. I used to grind my teeth...