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Teaching english to speakers of other languages can be difficult because of the different phonemes used by various languages. Some languages may be able to produce and distinguish between two similar phonemes while another language can not. The other language, in turn, may be able to speak and distinguish between two phonemes that the first language can not. There may even be phonemes that are present in one language but not the other. These problems can be present in two languages that stem from the same language family or between two languages that do not share a common history. The Korean language is sometimes classified as a language isolate or is lumped into the group of Altaic languages. As such, it is well removed from the roots of the english language. There are a few phonemes present in the english language, which, while readily distinguishable by native english speaker, prove problematic to native Korean speakers. There are also some phonemes in english that are not present in Korean. Korean grammatical rules may also affect the way in which a student’s english is pronounced. These differences often provide problems for Korean speakers who want to learn english.
Two phonemes indistinguishable to many Korean speakers are the phonemes /r/ and /l/. This can lead to the embarrassing problem of ordering ‘lice’ instead of ‘rice’, but the mispronunciation can sometimes be poetic. In the case of my mother-in-law, she wrote to inform us about when her ‘scheduled fright’ was going to land at the airport. This mispronunciation stems from the Korean consonant?, which is sometimes pronounced as /r/ and sometimes pronounced as /l/. This consonant is used as the /l/ in Hangul (Korean for the Korean language) and is also used for the /r/ in Goryeo (a Korean dynasty). The pronunciation is mainly due to its location within the word: pronounced /r/ when found between vowels and /l/ when found at the end of a syllable (section on allophones at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Language). This is just one of many examples of two phonemes that are distinguishable to an english speaker but prove difficult for a Korean speaker.
Due to the lack of a certain phoneme in the Korean language, Korean speakers find it difficult to distinguish between /dz/ and /z/. This is one pronunciation problem that my wife finds difficult (even after living and studying in an english speaking country for over 15 years). At times she has repeatedly called a coworker named ‘Zoe’, ‘Joey’ and wore ‘pazamas’ to bed. She also frequently says ‘jebra’ instead of ‘zebra’ (possibly these are the mythical offspring of giraffes and zebras). Even a loan word like pizza, which is used in everyday Korean, is pronounced with the /dz/ giving rise to ‘pija’ (http://koreanalyst.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/the-korean-learner-of-english-english-korean-cross-linguistic-challenges/). This problem stems from the fact that there is no consonant for the /z/ sound in Korean (http://hiteacher.com/korea/teaching-english-to-koreans.htm). Because this phoneme is absent in the Korean language, the student may be confused about the sounds /z/ and /dz/.
A final problem results from a grammatical rule present in the Korean language. In Korean most consonants are not properly pronounced unless the syllable in which the consonant is located ends in a vowel (http://hiteacher.com/korea/teaching-english-to-koreans.htm). As a result, many Korean speakers will tend to put an /u:/ or an /i:/ sound on the end of english words that end in a consonant. For example, my middle name, James, would be pronounced ‘Jamsoo’, and ‘english’ is sometimes pronounced ‘englishi’. The grammatical rule in Korean regarding the pronunciation of consonants can cause problems for the Korean english learner.
In conclusion, there are many pronunciation difficulties that Korean english learners must overcome. Korean learners must be able to distinguish between phonemes that are obvious to english speakers but not readily distinguishable in the Korean language. There are also phonemes that are present in english that are not present in Korean, and Korean grammar can also cause problems when it is carried over into english. Attention to the difficulties inherent in an english learner’s mother tongue will assist the teacher in helping their students succeed.
