Learn Korean Online - Simple Explanations in PLAIN English

Teaching both English and Korean here for six years (well, Korean for only 3), there are definitely some things that need to change.

Now granted, this will be written from the perspective of a person with a fairly run of the mill North American (Canadian) accent – basically, I’m not from either coast, super south or super north.

On the issue of the system making it easier for foreigners to speak Korean more like a native, there are a few things that need to change…

1a) Writing Korean words phonetically in English, there is often no distinction between the ‘long u’ sound as in ‘blue’ or in Korean, 중, and the ‘short u’ sound as in ‘hung’ or in Korean, 정. Often, the Korean examples I just gave are both spelt ‘Jung’ when romanized. Well, as a native English person reading that, I definitely read that as the ‘short u’ sound, sounding like ‘정’ – so if I couldn’t speak or read Korean I would easily make a mistake with the pronunciation of that.

My suggestion: Add something new. For the ‘long u’ sound, write the same ‘u’, but put a dot over top so that we know it’s ‘long’. It would work for the letter ‘o’ as well. Cause how do you differentiate between 동 or 당 (under the current romanization – see part 1b for my suggestion on that). So just put a small dot over the long ‘o’. Or just use ‘oo.’ That works okay, too. In my opinion.

1b) There’s also a huge problem, if the aim is to get foreigners pronouncing Korean words like the native sound, with the romanization of ‘ㅏ’. It is always romanized as ‘a’, for example ‘당’ is written ‘Dang.’ Ha! I always got a good kick out of my Floridian friend when he, and his slight southern drawl (sp??), would say that, knowing that it should sound like ‘dong,’ not, ‘dang.’ Ah, good memories.

My suggestion: the ‘ㅏ’ should be written as an ‘o’. The hugely common family name, 박, should become Pok, or Bok. Way closer to the original sound than the absolute bastardization, ‘Park’ (if the aim is to get foreigners saying Korean words closer to how they’re supposed to sound, that one got fouled straight back). Then the long ‘o’ be written as an ‘o’ with a dot over top.

2) Going the other way this time. The combination ‘~aw’ is horribly translated into Korean. Every time I say words like ‘saw’ or ‘law’ in class, when my students finally figure out what I’m saying, they say “Ohhhh, 쏘우 (for ‘saw’), or “…로우 for law. It’s crazy. For a country that spends as much on learning English as you do, you might want to consider helping your kids out and actually helping their pronunciation rather than completely ruining it.

3) Back to the romanization of Korean names. Lee! I’ve yet to meet a person in Korea with the last name ‘Lee’, but that’s how they all write it, including my wife. I’ve been saying this for years, and this is the first time it’s hitting a public forum, but change the spelling of the hugely common family name, ‘이’, to ‘Ee’. The only rule I know of governing what a word must or must not have, is that it must contain at least one vowel. We even stretch that out to include ‘y’ on occasion. And if ‘Ng’ can get away with having NO vowels in China, then ‘Ee’ having two, must surely be acceptable. And that’s all I’m going to say on that…for now.

Well, that’s been my rant. Korean scholars, if you’d like to call me up and ask some more, well, I don’t have a phone right now, but you can reply to this if you’d like. I know I’d like.

Cheers all,

Rob…

P.S. This rant was in response to the article written in the Korean Times at this link.