There are many pronunciation problems Koreans have when learning English. There are sounds that occur in English and not Korean, and vice versa. Intonation is also different. These problems have been compounded by the former manner in which Korean was transliterated into English. Also, many English words are now used in Korean with Korean pronunciation. Students often seem to think the Korean pronunciation of an English word is the correct pronunciation.
The sounds /f/, /v/, /ð/, /θ/, and /z/ do not occur in Korean. Therefore, Koreans tend to make substitutions for these sounds. For example, they might use a /s/ sound for /θ/, a /d/ sound for /ð/, a /dʒ/ sound for /z/, a /p/ sound for /f/, and a /b/ sound for /v/. especially at the beginning of words. So, for example, a beginner might read The zebra has fine thighs and thick veins. and pronounce it De Jebra has pine sighs and sick beins. When English words with /f/ sounds are transliterated into Korean, they use ㅍ (/p/) or ㅎ (/h/). This causes confusion when the put back into English. I’ve seen meat at the supermarket labelled ‘fresh fork’, and I use ‘kitchen hoil’ to roast a chicken.
Korean does not use consonant clusters. Therefore, Koreans will tend to add short vowel sounds to words. For example, the word ‘crisps’ and be given 5 syllables—'ke-ri-se-pe-se’.
Korean does not have /r/ and /l/ sounds. They have another sound, ㄹ, which seems to fall somewhere between /r/ and /l/. This causes major problems (or should I say ‘plobrems’?) for both Koreans learning English and English speakers learning Korean. English speakers speaking Korean can be understood if they substitute /r/ for a single ㄹ and /l/ for a double ㄹ (although this clearly isn’t correct pronunciation). Koreans confusing /r/ and /l/, however, can cause miscommunications. I once entered my church on a Sunday morning and somebody asked me if I could play that day. I sometimes played the keyboard but I’m not skilled so I always requested the list of songs in advance so I could practise. To be asked just before a service put me into panic mode. I desperately tried to find somebody who could give me the song list. Eventually I was told I had misunderstood. I wasn’t being asked to ‘play’ but to ‘pray’. I was relieved as this did not require prior practice.
There are also vowel sounds that occur in English but not Korean, for example, the long ee sound /i:/. Hence ‘He leaves with his family’ may sound like ‘He lives with his family’. The /ɜː/ sound is very difficult for Koreans, especially after /w/ as in ‘work’. The /w/ sound itself is not difficult, but in Korean it only occurs before certain vowels. Before /ʊ/ (‘wood’ ‘wool’) it’s very difficult for Koreans to pronounce. The schwa doesn’t occur in Korean, so Koreans tend to end words like ‘sofa’ with the /æ/ sound. They also tend to try to cope with the English dipthongs by turning them into 2 vowels, for example, ‘Hi’ becomes ‘Ha-i’.
Korean words don’t end with /tʃ/, so Koreans tend to add an extra vowel syllable after this sound, e.g., sandwich becomes sandwichy.
The transliteration system used by the Korean government has changed relatively recently. This causes confusion in the minds of English learners. For example, ㅂ used to be transliterated as ‘p’ but now as ‘b’. ‘b’ is a closer sound to the Korean ㅂ but there are now some strange inconsistencies. For example, the city of Pusan became Busan but the university is still known as PNU (Pusan National University). Likewise ㄱ used to be transliterated as ‘k’ but now as ‘g’. Again, ‘g’ is closer to ㄱ than ‘k’. However, a large proportion of the Korean population has the surname 김which is still transliterated as Kim even though it’s pronounced ‘Gim’ (hard ‘g’). These inconsistencies confuse Korean students.
Many English words have become part of the Korean language, but with major changes in pronunciation. For example, the word sauna has become ‘sa-oo-na’ in Korean. Sometimes students take a lot of convincing that this is not the correct English pronunciation.
Word stress and sentence stress are a lot less important in Korean than in English. I was recently invited by Korean friends to go to the cinema to see what sounded like Mamarmia 2 (stress on the 2nd syllable). It took a few minutes to work out that I was being invited to Mama Mia 2.
One of the biggest problems for English-speakers learning Korean is the 5 so-called double constants, for example, ㅂ and ㅃ. To the ears of English-speakers they sound the same but are very different to a Korean. After 19 years in Korea, I still can’t make the ㅃ sound. Another problem is there are 4 vowels (ㅒ ㅒ ㅔ ㅖ) which sound basically the same to an English speaker (though these cause less problems in communication than the double consonants).
Certainly, learning correct pronunciation is one of the main challenges for Koreans learning English and English-speakers learning Korean.
