Korean is spoken as a first language by over 70 million people.

This article looks

at the kind of issues Korean native speakers have when they learn English.

Overview
Korean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea as well as the
Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture inChina. It is the first language of
approximately 72 million people.

English education is big business in SouthKorea and many students attend extra
lessons after their regular school day. Also, more and more universities are
making it possible for students to be accepted into tertiary programs by using
English even if they will not be studying English in their degrees.

In entertainment, movies are shown in English with subtitles and there are
numerous English-only television channels. Street signs are also usually written
in both English and Korean. There’s also a trend to use random English words in
pop songs, adverts and products!

The Alphabet
The first noticeable difference between English and Korean is that the Korean
alphabet (Hangeul) looks and sounds completely different to the English
alphabet. This means that students need lots of practice in writing and saying
these sounds.

Korean Alphabet (Hangeul)

Consonants:
ㄱ sounds like g.
ㄴ sounds like n.
ㄷ sounds like d.
ㄹ sounds like l.
ㅁ sounds like m.
ㅂ sounds like b.
ㅅ sounds like s.
ㅇ doesn’t have any sound when it comes first and sounds like ~ng when it is at the bottom.
ㅈ sounds like j.
ㅊ sounds like ch.
ㅋ sounds like k.
ㅌ sounds like t.
ㅍ sounds like p.
ㅎ sounds like h.

Vowels:
ㅏ sounds like a.
ㅑ sounds like ya.
ㅓ sounds like u.
ㅕ sounds like yu.
ㅗ sounds like o.
ㅛ sounds like yo.
ㅜ sounds like oo.
ㅠ sounds like yoo.
ㅡ sounds like eu
ㅣ sounds like i

There are some mixed consonants and vowels.

ㄲ sounds like gg.
ㄸ sounds like dd.
ㅃ sounds like bb
ㅆ sounds like ss.
ㅉ sounds like jj.
ㅐ sounds like ae
ㅒ sounds like yae
ㅔ sounds like ae
ㅖ sounds like yae
ㅚ sounds like oi
ㅙ sounds like oae
ㅟ sounds like we
ㅞ sounds like wae
ㅢ sounds like eui
ㅝ sounds like wu.

Pronunciation Issues
Another major problem is that certain English sounds do not exist in Korean.
These sounds are substituted with similar sounds (see the table), which affects
how clearly Koreans speak.

Sound Common Substitution

Korean learners of English tend to start with a /p/ and force air
between their lips. The result sounds almost identical to an /f/.
However, problems arise when they pair the substitute sound with
f other consonants. For example, in “free,” it sounds markedly different
when pronounced using this common /f/ substitution. At other times,
they may pronounce an /f/ as an unmodified /p/ so that a word like
“coffee” is pronounced as “coppee.”

Korean learners of English often substitute a /b/ sound so that places

v
like Vancouver are pronounced as “Bancouber.”

th
/s/ is often substituted for “th” (Θ) so “think” sounds like “sink.”
(third)

th (the) /d/ is often substituted for “th” (ð), which makes “this” sound like “dis.”
zh as in
vision /z/ and /ʒ/ are both often pronounced as a vague /j/ (dʒ) sound, so
words like “zip” are pronounced “jip” and “pizza” becomes “pija.”
and z
Diphthongs

Diphthongs (two vowel sounds that glide to form one sound) are very difficult for
students because they don’t exist in Korean.

For example, the word “eye” begins with [a] (as in “father”) and ends with [ɪ] (as
in “be”) with the tongue gliding smoothly from the [a] to the [ɪ].

These sounds do not exist in Korean so students either leave out the glide or
pronounce the diphthong as two distinct vowels. When written in Hangeul, most
diphthongs are written as two distinct vowels. For example, [aɪ] (as in “main”) is
written as 아이 when transliterated into Hangeul. Many Korean students never
master diphthongs.

Stress and Intonation

Unlike Korean, in English, we use stress and intonation to create and/or change
the meaning of a word (e.g. mobile vs mobile). This leads to a situation where
Koreans speaking English can sound somewhat monotonous.

End Sounds

In Korean, words can only end in vowels or certain consonants, so students often
add a vowel to English words that end in certain consonants.

For example, the plural /s/ occurs frequently in English but Korean words cannot
end with /s/ so Koreans say “missee” or “nice-uh” instead of “miss” or “nice.” This
is a habit that needs to be corrected consistently.

Number of Syllables

Korean words never have more than two consonants pronounced in one syllable.
English words that are pronounced as one syllable, such as “disk,” would consist
of three syllables in Korean (디스크 – di-suh-keu). This takes a lot of practice for
students to correct, but a gentle reminder is usually enough to fix problems.
Grammar Issues in Korean vs English
The following section outlines the major differences in grammar between English
& Korean.

Sentence Structure

English has a strict Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) order that needs a lot of practice
to perfect. The speaker addresses what a subject is going to do to an object.

For example:

I play the piano.

{I (S) play (V) the piano. (O)}

Korean uses a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) order in which the speaker address

the subject then the object and then what is going to be done to the object.

For example:

I piano play.

나는 피아노를 연주
naneun pianoleul yeonju

{I (S) piano (O) play. (V)} Also, the subject can sometimes be left out of a
sentence in Korean, which students often do in English, too.

Parts of Speech

In Korean, adjectives (describing words) do the same job as verbs by indicating

the tense. This is something that many Korean speakers transfer into their
English sentences. They also use nouns as adjectives. For example: My
daughter is illness.

Also, definite and indefinite articles (the, a, an) don’t exist in Korean and many
students never manage to master this part of English grammar. It is common for
them to say things like, “I played guitar song in school festival.” At
a beginner level, this sentence would probably sound like this: “Guitar song
school festival played.”

Subject-verb Agreement

Korean does not make use of concord (subject-verb agreement) so most

Koreans struggle with this in English. It is common for them to mix tenses and
lack concord like this sentence: My sister like[s] [to] play [the] piano.

Preposition vs. Postposition

Prepositions are also difficult for Korean students because Korean makes use of
postpositions instead. Postpositions are suffixes or short words that immediately
follow a noun or pronoun in Korean grammar. They fulfill a number of functions
and are more commonly referred to as subject and object participle markers. For
example:

1. 30 분동안 잤어요. – 30 minutes for slept. (I slept for 30 minutes.)

2. 이것은 연필이다. – This pencil is. (This is a pencil.)

Articles

Korean does not have articles as they are found in English and there is no
distinction between definite and indefinite articles. Thus learners will often
confuse the usage of a, an and the. This can lead to students saying things like:

* I bought new car this week.

* an asterisk denotes an ungrammatical sentence

Nouns

There is often confusion between countable and non-countable nouns.

Verbs

In verb forms, Korean speakers often confuse the present with the future due
to mt influence. There is also confusion with the past simple and present perfect
simple. All this means that the use of verbs needs to be carefully explained and
covered.

There are also often issues with subject-verb agreement.

Also Korean tends to prefertransitive to intransitive verbs. Thus you will often
hearutterances where an English intransitive verb is made transitive:

* I told to him

Conclusion
Korean students are excellent linguistic chameleons! They are very good at
mimicking accents and words immediately after hearing them, but this does not
mean that they have achieved or mastered the aspect of language being taught.
It is common to have students who appear to have mastered skills in one lesson
and seem never to have heard of them in the next lesson. It usually takes a lot
more repetition than initially anticipated for students to demonstrate genuine
progress and knowledge so teachers should not be scared to spend more than
one week on new language concepts.