Korean Job Discussion Forums

[AsiaESLbound]

It's not a A, it's uh A. Is A commonly pronounced by non-Americans like this? As, "uh," as in, "It's a(uh) blue car." I guess we speak it like that since it flows more freely in a natural way where speaking, "it's A blue car," is too clunky. I never really gave this a thought before nor can I remember if we said A instead of uh back in old school. It's just natural to me to say, "uh," and Americans commonly say it without thinking how improper it really is. Do British and common wealth country people say it and teach it like this?

I don't even both teaching, "an," any more in front of nouns starting with a vowel as they seem to never remember or understand that so now it's always like, "it's uh pink elephant," even though that too is grammatically wrong, but I do commonly speak an as, "an," instead of, "uh." I have many bloopers with this one as they don't get, "an," and grammar is not what the school wants my lesson to be about. I'm not going to be a stickler on grammar with elementary age as I know their Korean teachers will get them sorted out more so with that as times progresses. I just want them to speak in sentences in an ask and answer conversation manner. Vocabulary is the easy part of teaching as they just lap that up like sweet milk.

[CentralCali]

It seems as though someone's never heard of free variation.

[Steve_Rogers2008]

But someone's "hooked on phonics..."

[languistic]

[mj roach]

k/eng teachers most likely taught the students to pronounce 'an' as 'un'
thanks to 'pops-eng teachers' like Kwak Youg-il or Oh Sung-sik n/amer 'native speaker' style over substance

[pkang0202]

I use "ay" and "uh" interchangeably. I do prefer to use "ay" instead of "uh" because I feel the "ay" puts more emphasis on the following word than "uh".

I am speaking very slowly emphasis a particular language point, I will say "ay" as am emphasis.

Normally I say, "This is uh book".

but, if I say it slowly to enunciate it properly, I will say, "This...is...ay....book".

Feel free to criticize. I'm not going to change the way I talk.

[dumpring]

I say "uh" but then i'm a kiwi.
eg:
Teacher: What's this?
Student: 물라?
Teacher: It's "uh" Frog.
Student: 부로꾸?
Teacher: Yes.

[denverdeath]

I always tell them, "A DOES NOT EQUAL ARE." "Uh" means "han-gey", okay? This is definitely a bit of a problem regardless of the level of the student in Korea.

[djsmnc]

[bettypie]

on a related topic, one of my adult students totally called me out for the whole American "t" thing. Ya know, how in the middle of words 'T' sounds like "d"? I'd never thought about it until I took a linguistics class in college, but even then it didn't stop the bad habit. Are Americans really the only ones who do this?