Hangeul:
Hangeul is a phonetic alphabet, created in the 15th century by King SeJong, and originally translated directly to “The correct sounds for the instruction of the people.” This alone makes the English language and Roman alphabet difficult for the native Korean Speakers, that aren’t raised with the Western Alphabet. The Korean alphabet remains fairly static in its sounds as opposed to the English language which may change based on any number of factors. The Hangeul writing system was created specifically to make literacy easier for the common people. This was decreed at a time when only those who could afford an education, or held social standing, could read. Currently, however, most Korean people are raised learning the Western Alphabet in tandem with Hangeul, just not the pronounciations.
King Sejong created the alphabet for the common people
Morphemes & Konglish: Why did I put these two together? Well one of the fun things about Korean is it is always adapting and changing. Just like I talked about in phonemes how they use substitutions for sounds, they straight up steal English words and make them their own. This is not Korean learning English this is Korean language adopting English words and altering them to fit. On the right side are English words they have taken and added their own meaning to. In the circle is 사인 (sign) and if you needed a signature you could ask 사인 주세요 (sign please). It is now used as the word ‘signature’
In the blue circle is the word 히프, I am not going to go into the meaning, but the dual syllable sound. Another example is In Korean a consonant is never without a vowel (or a vowel without a pure sound). They will always be paired together therefore you will often have Koreans that end words with ‘e’ or may have issues with a double consonant sound a good example of this is their version of the word 스트레스 (Suh-tuh-ress-uh). When learning English this will carry over as added ‘e’ on words like ‘college’ and ‘purse’ and I will let you sound that out on your own because when I heard it I had to ask them to repeat themselves. I often hear age as age-e, and it really sounds like a different word.
This poster for Tazza is another example. The ㅉ is used to make the ‘z’ sound when it really is a ‘j’.
Because we don’t have the same sounds between languages substitutions are made. **You will see on the chart where substitutions are made A very common thing is substitution for sounds. An example on the chart is피자 (pizza) written into English it is pija.
In the Korean language they don’t have ‘TH’ ‘F’ or ‘V’ so labio dental fricatives are difficult to master.
This poster for Tazza is another example. The ㅉ is used to make the ‘z’ sound when it really is a ‘j’.