Korean Job Discussion Forums

[While Away]

Had a funny question during class yesterday. Covered the rules for comparative and superlative adjectives yesterday. Basically, one syllable adjectives (smart) take an -er (smarter); while long three syllable adjectives (expensive) take more (more expensive). (Yes, I covered two syllable also, but not important here).
Then after class a student came and asked how we know how many syllables a word has, because 'smart' seems to have three syllables. He clearly pronounced:
스마트 (Su-mar-tu)
Oh man, never thought counting syllables would be so interesting. I had to tell him to check a dictionary.

[rokgryphon]

Vowel sounds. Every vowel sound is one syllable. If they you want to teach them the number of syllables have them put their fist on their chin and pronounce the word. With every syllable their chin will go down.

[oskinny1]

[Drew345]

I really like the fist on the chin idea, and counting vowell sounds is a great definition.

I think the humor was lost a little bit there though. In Korea they cannot say an S+M together without a vowell in between. Or they add the extra vowell on the end as the previous poster said. No S+T without a vowell inbtween, no D+R without a vowell, and many other consonate clusters become multisyllable words.
Kind-of funny, since counting syllables isn't thought of as a tricky thing..

[Ya-ta Boy]

You can also make a game of counting syllables.

Make a list of vocab words from the past few units and divide into teams.

Everyone writes down the number of syllables (or they hold up fingers) they think are in the word, and you count how many on each team got it right. One point for the winning team. And so on.

[badfish]

I thought I finally found a group of people who share my OCD