Korean vs. English: Contrasts in Phonology, Morphology and Culture

If you are teaching English as a second or foreign language, it is important to understand the native language of your students. Since I have been living in South Korea for over 8 years, I will show you how to learn and understand more about a language, without necessarily becoming fluent, in order to become a more effective teacher by contrasting Korean with English. 

The first, and easiest, step begins with exploring the history and culture of the language in order to lay a solid foundation of understanding. Often understanding the language will lend you further awareness of social norms and codes of other cultures. Next, is learning the actual pieces of the language. The characters, words, vowels, consonants and other basic functions of language will absolutely help with efficient second language instruction. 

History and Culture

The Korean language, called Hangul, was created by one of its most beloved Kings during the Joseon Dynasty – King Sejong. His intention was to create a simpler alphabet so that people of every class could learn how to read and write, thus uniting his country. Koreans are, as a result, very proud of their language and its history. This pride extends freely through their culture and citizens. 

Alphabet

The Korean alphabet is called Hangul (한굴), and consists of 26 characters in total. Characters are joined together to make a block of text, with 2-4 characters in each block. A complete word consists of at least one vowel and one consonant.

Obviously, this is very different than English and as such beginners may need more guided instruction with learning English word formation.

After gaining a simple understanding of the history of the language, it is essential to understand the differences between the vowels and consonants of the two languages. It is especially important to note differences that could create miscommunication in either language.

Vowel Contrasts 

Hangul features predominantly typically short vowel sounds compared to English. Generally, Korean speakers are unable to differentiate between certain long and short vowel sounds.

Example: There is little differentiation between /ee/ and /i/. This is evident when pronouncing words like sheep /ship; peel, pill; wheel/will.

 Native Korean speakers tend to use a short /i/ sound in each case. 

 

Most vowels are preceded by a /y/ or a /w/, working as a semi vowel

Examples: 요보세요 (Yoboseyo) and 와요 (Wah-yo). 

In English, vowels don’t have a necessary, marked preceding consonant or semi vowel.

Consonant Contrasts

Hangul does not feature an /f/ or /v/ sound. These phonemes are replaced with /h/ or /p/ or /b/.

Sometimes English learners can confuse the /f/ and /p/ sound and interchange them when learning. For example, some learners will say ‘pork’ for fork, but also say ‘fark’ for ‘park’, even though ‘park’ is a word that features Korean parallel consonants and vowels.

 

After learning about basic speaking and reading obstacles, the focus should be on language conventions.

Punctuation and Capital Letters.

Luckily for Korean learners (as many Elementary English teachers will claim), Hangul does not employ the capitalization of letters. It also does not employ some of the other popular English conventions such as quotation marks or commas. Considering it takes native speaking English learners years to learn the ins and outs of grammatical conventions, it could be very difficult for the average Korean student to grasp these concepts.

Finally, once you consider all of these factors, it’s time to look at the language on a broader spectrum – Morphology. This is very important when teaching a language because it enables instructors to understand the differences between languages and identify causes of problems more easily.

Morphology

Hangul is a subject – object – verb language.

           Example: English: I bought 5 apples.

                       Korean: I apples 5 bought. (나는 사과가 다섯게 샀어요.)

If students are unaware of the difference of word order in English, it can cause serious difficulty in acquisition and comprehension.

Hangul uses honorific forms when addressing elders or people of higher ranking. This is tied to culture and is extremely important. To a new English speaking teacher in South Korea, this can be very difficult to understand since there is no real comparison in English, except for Sir/Madam (I suppose, but it’s not really a succinct comparison). This is especially difficult if teaching adults because it is easy to offend people with an exception of honorifics in speech.

Learning about the native language of your students will be endlessly helpful in your success in teaching English. It is very useful to consider your students' language experience, skills and abilities in order to fully enable them in English language acquisition.