Pronuniciation Problems in Specific Countries

Pronunciation Problems in Korea

In Korea, English is big business. As the English language is (perhaps) the closest thing to a universal language that is present in the world today, South Korea places a large amount of importance on a student’s ability to effectively communicate to native English speakers. English is part of their curriculum from at least middle school on (in public schools) and many students have access to English education from three years old and up, whether through home schooling or formal English academies.

As such, learning English is a large facet of success later in life. Business is extremely big in Korea, and to be a good businessman, you must speak English. Testing well on the state English tests also helps considerably in getting into a good university.

The spoken Korean language is call hanguk mal and its written form is hangul. Hangul is a phonemic alphabet, putting it in stark contrast with the English alphabet. This causes many problems for Koreans learning to speak English (or for a native speaker of English trying to learn Korean). Because it is phonemic, there is no way to turn written Korean into sounds that are not normally found in hanguk mal. English, being a much less insulated language than Korean, has evolved to have a fairly large number of different sounds associated with it. Missing from the Korean language (but present in English) are: f, th, sh (except in one instance), z, v, most consonant blends, and qu.

In the case of the specific letters (f, z, etc), there is merely no way of making that sound in hangul. As there is no matching sound in Korean, different letters are always substituted for them. For instance, v becomes b (vitamin = bitamin), f becomes p (phone = pone) and z becomes g (zebra = gebra). In the case of diphthongs, there isn´t any particular way they´re dealt with. Sometimes students can turn a th into an f sound (thimble = fimble), or sometimes an s sound (faith = face). The sh sound is used in Korean, but only when the “s” character is placed with the “ee” character (making “shee”). Other than that, there is no natural occurrence of the sh sound in Korean. English, as we know, is very dependent on consonant blends. Korean, on the other hand, uses none of them, and must form ways to make the sounds while staying within the rules of the written language. Hangul is a much more organized alphabet than the English one. Koreans write in blocks. Each block can consist of no more than two consonants and one vowel (in the pattern consonant-vowel- consonant) although it can also consist of just a vowel, a consonant- vowel or vowel-consonant. Each block forms one syllable. Two consonants can never occur without a vowel between them (as consonant blends are not syllables in and of themselves). Because of this, Koreans usually add the “uh” character as a placeholder between the consonants (pronounced in the same way as “could”). For instance, my name (Scott) is phonetically spelled out in Korean as either Suh-kott or Suh-kot-tuh.

All of these differences cause problems in pronunciation for students learning English, especially younger students who have only been exposed to “Konglish” and aren´t aware that the popular pronunciation for many of the English words they know is wrong. Many children have problems with the “sh” sound, but in an oddly opposite way than someone would normally think of pronunciation errors. Some students will add the “sh” sound when pronouncing any word that is an “s” followed be an “ee” sound. This is most prevalent when a student turns “see” into “she.” Words ending in an “sh,” or sometimes any consonant at all, will receive an “ee” sound in Konglish (my favorite example is Bush [as in George Bush] becoming “Bushee”). Other common ones are large becoming “large-ee” and orange becoming “orange-ee”).

Another common error is students pronouncing the “uh” placeholder when using consonant blends. This stems mostly from the fact that, because consonant blends don’t happen in hanguk mal, their natural reaction is to place the “uh” between the consonants so it sounds more natural to them.

The most obvious issues when teaching English to new students is introducing them to completely new sounds that are associated with common English words. Much time is invested in teaching students how to place their tongue to pronounce a “th,” or a “v” or “f.” Oddly, there is rarely an issue with pronouncing the “qu” sound.

All of these instances cause a good deal of stress and work in the classroom, but they also offer an interesting opportunity to see the differences and similarities between English and Korean. I consider it a positive experience teaching in Korea and getting to learn a completely different alphabet and language from the ones I’m used to.

Pronunciation Issues in Japan

In Japan, as in all countries, there are specific difficulties that the native people have with pronouncing English when it is not there first language. As Japanese is an almost exclusively syllabic language, there are many issues that one can come across. This article will focus on two particular anomalies within the Japanese pronunciation of English words: The ‘L’ sound and the ‘lone consonant’. Through the experience of this author as both a teacher of English and a university certificate holder in the Japanese language, as well as through external sources, this article will attempt to succinctly explain the reason behind these pronunciation conundrums and give possible teaching solutions to combat them. Let us start with the lone consonant, as it has great affect on the ability for the Japanese to make many English sounds clearly. One of the first things a person learns in regards to Japanese, just as in learning many languages, are the basic sounds that make up the language . As previously stated, unlike the English alphabet, the Japanese equivalent has nearly no lone consonants, meaning that each consonant is almost always paired with a vowel. The one instance of a lone consonant is the ‘n’ sound, which is pronounced alone as ‘un’. This makes words like ‘wagon’ easy to pronounce because it is made of two Japanese syllables ‘wa’ and ‘go’, then finished with the Japanese lone consonant ‘n’. However, the lack of all other lone consonants creates a constant issue when teaching English because automatically, Japanese learners will tend to pair the lone consonants with vowels. For example, a word like ‘patrol’, which has three lone consonants, will be pronounced ‘patororu’. In response to this teachers have created ways to combat the mispronunciation. One way is to do this is to feign confusion as to what the student is saying until the student pronounces it correctly or, in the case the person has forgotten how, correct them nicely by saying “Oh you mean ___”, and then have them repeat it with the correct pronunciation multiple times. Another effective method is to help them redefine their method of making words into syllables by mixing it with the English method. For example, a teacher would, with the added use of hand gestures, over-emphatically say “pa” “tro” “l”, then “pa” “trol”, and finally “patrol”. This lack of lone consonants however is not the only issue that many Japanese learners and their teachers face however. 

The ‘L’ sound is defined as a consonantal sound made when the tip of the tongue is placed behind the teeth but before the hard palate, such as in the word ‘lollipop’, or when the back of the tongue is raised toward the soft palate, such as in the word ‘jell’ . The Japanese language does not have this sound, even if it is attached to a vowel to form a syllable. The nearest sound within the Japanese language is the ‘R’ sound. In turn, many beginners, especially first- time learners, have exceptional difficulty pronouncing the most common ‘L’ words with accuracy. Words like ‘lonely’ and ‘small’ become ‘ronri’ and ‘sumarru’. Again teachers have created ways to deal with this linguistic issue. One particularly interesting method is by physically showing the students how the sound is made and having them do it too. Then after holding the position for a minute or so, having the students say words that begin and/or end with ‘L’. This method has the positive outcome of making both the students and teacher look like complete cretins, usually earning more than a few laughs from everyone, and giving the students sound specific practice.

Pronunciation anomalies are not common among any one group of English learners, but are a constancy that one finds all over the English learning world. Those focused upon in this article are not the only issues that plague Japanese learners of English, however like all problems they can be solved through collaboration between the understanding teacher and the willing students. The first step is knowledge of what the issue is and why it occurs. From there both the students and teachers can come up with good ways to correct the problem. Through this article it was attempted to succinctly, but wholly, address two main issues that Japanese learners tend to have when learning English: The ‘L’ phoneme and the solo consonant.