TEFL Michiana Michigan

Every country, when speaking a foreign language, has its own distinct difficulties, most arising from the difference between the native language and foreign language being taught. In South Korea these pronunciation challenges occur mostly from attempting to match english sounds with Korean. The first problem occurs in that the english alphabet contains several sounds which are unknown in Korean. For example, the Korean alphabet does not contain the sounds [f], [v], or [z] so Koreans tend to substitute these sounds with their closest equivalents of [p], [b], and [j]. Thus ‘zip' becomes ‘jip' and ‘fat' is pronounced as ‘pat.' While many Koreans will pronounce english words with the above conversion, students of english, who are aware of this conversion, can often go the other extreme and, considering [p], [b], and [j] to be Korean equivalents of english sounds, tend to overuse [f], [v], and [z] in english to the point where they substitute every [p], [b] and [j], even where appropriate, for [f], [v], and [z]. These students might pronounce ‘pajama' as ‘fazama.' The sound [th] is also problematic and tends to be pronounced as [s] or [d] and since Korean only has one symbol for both the [r] and [l] sounds, Koreans find it very tricky to differentiate between the two. A second form of pronunciation which Koreans struggle with is the difference between voiced and unvoiced consonants. In Korean, whether a consonant is voiced or unvoiced depends on its placement between other sounds whereas in english this distinction is more pre-determined. For example, [k] is an unvoiced consonant and [g] is a voiced consonant. In english “pick” sounds the same on its own as it does in the phrase “pick up,” however Koreans tend to pronounce the latter as ‘pig up' because they have substituted the unvoiced consonant for the voiced. A Further problem that Koreans have with consonants is that in Korean it is impossible to have more than two consonants in a single syllable whereas english produces such consonant clusters as ‘disks' and ‘amidst.' Koreans are not naturally equipped with the knowledge of how to pronounce more than two consonants in a row so they will often break up such consonant clusters with superfluous vowels. ‘Amidst' might be pronounced as ‘a-mid-su-tu.' A similar practice happens to consonants at the end of a word. Korean words almost exclusively end in vowels and, the several words that do not, end in unvoiced consonants. Koreans therefore have difficulty ending a word with a consonant, especially a voiced one, and tend to add vowels onto the end when pronouncing english words. For example, the word ‘head' is pronounced as ‘he-du' and the word ‘page' (ending in the [g] sound) becomes ‘pay-gee.' However, for those Koreans who are aware of this habit, they may become over conscious and eliminate necessary vowels at the end of words, such as pronouncing ‘issue' as ‘ish.' Yet despite all the mispronunciation resulting from the addition of vowels, Koreans also struggle with several english vowels. Similar to the case with the consonants, there are several vowel sounds which are absent in Korean. An example of which is the hard ‘i' in such words as ‘snickers.' Some Koreans find it impossible to differentiate between the words ‘snickers' and ‘sneakers' because they pronounce all ‘i's with the long [ee] sound. A second issue with english vowels is that Korean has no diphthongs and thus Koreans have trouble merging and gliding between the two vowel sounds. Koreans will often either substitute the [ee] sound for any diphthong or they will pronounce both vowels distinctly. An example for the former method is that Koreans tend to pronounce ‘it' and ‘eat' identically and, as for the latter method, ‘eye' becomes ‘ah-ee.' The final aspect is the worst offender in creating pronunciation problems for Koreans. This is that the Korean language has adopted many english loan words but transformed them to fit the Korean language pronunciation. Several examples of this are ‘ice-cream' becoming ‘ah-ee-su-ku-reem,' ‘pizza' pronounced as ‘pija,' and ‘coffee' being spoken as ‘coppee.' These Konglish words, as they are termed, are an intimate part of the Korean language, especially for young, city dwelling, Koreans and so many Koreans are fooled into thinking that these words have the same pronunciation in english. Konglish words ingrain the previous english mispronunciations into habit for Koreans who find it more difficult to pronounce english accurately since they must first un-learn the Konglish. References: http://koreanalyst.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-korean-learner-of-english-english-korean-cross-linguistic-challenges/ http://joshinggnome.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/overcorrection/ http://hiteacher.com/korea/teaching-english-to-koreans.htm