The story about 'cold' vs 'called'.

Last Friday, I was on the way to have dinner with a half bunch of students after Fee's open house. It was a quite cold and windy day compared to a couple of days previous. I overheard one of Korean students talking to another. "!@#$% called" he said, "called who?" I interupted their conversation. But shortly after I listened to him more about the story, I realized he meant it was cold.
That story reminded me of my story three years ago. It was this time of year on cold and snowy day. I just got in my friend's car to head to practice and said. "it's cold/kɔld/". My friend said, "called who?" it was the same lines as the Korean guy, haha. I didn't know why my friend misunderstood me at that time. Now I know why it happened. This is the common mistake for Korean students who learn English, especially this time of year with cold weather; should say and hear the word cold many times every day . Since we don't have diphthong vowels, the second sound of which is /w/, such as /aw/ as in bow or /ow/ as in cold or as in holy cow /howlikaw/. In many cases, it doesn't really matter to get a main point of a message but in this case, producing /ɔ/ for /ow/ caused misunderstanding. It might cause something else such as communication breakdown or an awkward moment depending on situations or who you speak to if you speak to a person who you do not really know or have not talked each other before. Without any background information, it is not that easy to guess a main point when second language learners make a mistake. However, Some are sensetive enough to their mistakes, so they use different strategies to cope with that situations and they finally get their message accross successfully without communication breakdowns.
According to the book I read (Teaching Pronunciation), mispronunciation for vowels is main cause of foreign accent. Regardless of all possible problems, it is inevitalble for the second language learners to have foreign accents, especially adults learners like me; I have been learning and speaking English since age of 32. There is no simple solution to get rid of them but if you keep practicing, talking, and interacting with people, you can reduce your foreign accent. Personally, I think it is okay to speak with foreign accents as long as people understand you. It sometimes depends on who you hang out with, though. There are some people who are familar with foreign accents but some are not who have a problem to understand people who have an accent. English is not just a language for American, Canadian, and British people anymore. It is used by many people in the globe. It's meaningless to talk about foreign accents too much in that sense but there is a standard accent which is used by majority. Thus, I can say it is good to have a standard like accent to make your friends' life easier.

'U' is a 'Q' stalker?

The letter 'q' is almost always followed by the letter 'u'. Can you name any words in which there is a 'q' followed by other than 'u'? As a nonnative speaker of English, I can't think of any words in my mind. Can you?
For 'u', he stalks 'ng' combination as well. When he follows 'q' and 'ng', he changes his face. what I mean by that, phonetically, U is pronounced as a /w/ after 'q' which is not final and 'ng' as in qustion, Quebec, language, and penguin.
Like this phenomenon, the letter of English alphabet doesn't represent one sound all the time and one sound doesn't represent a particular letter as well.
What I want to say is Korean alphabet doesn't work like that. Even though there are sounds variation like other languages, one consonant and vowel represent one sound as far as I know. Maybe I am wrong because I didn't study Korean seriously after high school but it is not as crazy as English.
I do a language exchange with some English speakers here. There are some very beginner learners. Although they don't know meaning of sentences, they can at least read as long as they know the Korean alphabet.
There is an extreme example of irregularity English spelling system. Do you know how to say 'ghoti'? It is pronounced the same as 'fish'. 'gh', /f/ as in laugh; 'o', /ɪ/ as in women; 'ti', /ʃ/ as in nation.
I remember I read a article about English spelling system. It said that English spelling system needs to be reformed. To support their theory, they gave a number of examples. I only remember one which is children in English spoken countries spend more time to learn word spelling. One day I turned on the TV and watched some kind of a word spelling quiz show. The host asks guests to spell very long and difficult words. The more they can spell, the more they score. That kind of show wouldn't exist in Korea because as soon as you say words, you can spell them unlike English.
This difficulty doesn't just apply to people in English spoken counties, because now English is an international language, people all over the world are suffering to learn English. I wish Korean would be one so that we don't need to have a hard time to spell words at least.

'q'는 다음에는 거의 항상 'u'가 따라온다. 'q'가 있는 단어중에 'u'가 다음에 오지 않는 단어를 말할 수 있어요? 영어가 모국어가 아닌 나로서는 지금 생각나는 단어가 없다. 너는?
'u'는 'ng' 조합을 또한 따라다닌다. 'u'가 'q'와 'ng'를 따라다닐때 그는 그의 모습을 바꾼다. 무슨뜻이나면, 음성학적으로 'u'는 마지막음절이 아닌 'q'와 'ng' 다음에 qustion, Quebec, language, and penguin에서처럼 /w/로 발음이 된다.
이런 현상처럼, 영어의 각 알파벳문자는 하나의 음을 나타내지 않고 또한 하나의 음이 특정적인 알파벳문자를 대표하지 않는다.
내가 말하고 싶은 것은 한국어 알파벳은 영어의 그것과 같지 않다는 것이다. 비록 다른 모든 언어들에서처럼 음의 변화현상은 있지만, 내가 아는 한, 하나의 자음과 모음이 하나의 음으로 소리난다. 한국어를 고등학교 이후로 공부하질 않아서, 아마 내가 틀릴수도 있지만 영어처럼 그렇게 헷갈리지는 않는다.
내가 여기에서 language exchange를 몇몇 영어스피커들과 한다. 몇몇은 한국어초보이지만 알파벳을 아는 한 문장들을 이해를 못하지만 읽을수는 있다.
이런 불규칙적인 영어철자를 보여주는 극단적인 예가 있다. 'ghoti'를 어떻게 말하는지 아는가? 이것은 fish가 발음되는 것처럼 똑같이 발음이 된다. 'gh'는 laugh에서처럼 /f/로 ; 'o'는 women에서 처럼 /I/로; 'ti'는 nation에서 처럼 /ʃ/로 발음이 된다.
신문에서 읽은 영어철자시스템에 대한 기사를 기억한다. 그 기사에서 영어철자시스템은 다시 고쳐질 필요가 있다고 했다. 그 주장을 지지하는 여러 예가 있었는데 지금 하나만 기억나는데, 영어국가에서 어린이들이 철자를 배우는데 더 오랜 시간이 걸린다고 했다. 어느날 TV를 켜서 보는데 무슨 철자맞추기 쇼가 방영되고 있었다. 사회자가 게스트들에게 아주 길고 어려운 단어의 철자를 묻는 것이였다. 더 많은 철자를 맞출수록, 더 많은 점수를 얻는 것이였다. 이런 쇼는 한국에서는 아마 존재하지 않을것이다. 왜냐하면 영어와는 다르게 단어를 말하자마자 철자를 맞출수 있기 때문이다.
이런 영어철자시스템의 어려움은 이제 단지 영어국가의 사람들에게만 적용되는것은 아니다. 영어가 이제 국제어이기 때문에 세계의 모든사람들이 영어를 배우는데 고통을 받고 있다.
그런 연유로 한국어가 국제어가 됐으면 하는 바램이다. 그러면 적어도 더이상 단어철자때문에 힘들지는 않을 것이기 때문이다.

My TOEFL is Tofu...

Phonetically, there are two L sounds in English. I am pretty sure people who didn't study phonetics in university don't agree with that. If you are one of them, you can test yourself saying the list of words below.

badly late clear wool bulk

Say them with focusing on the production of /l/ sound in each word. When you say 'badly', you definitely feel your tip of the tongue touching just behind the upper teeth(alveolar ridge). On the other hand, when you say 'wool' or 'bulk', you may or may not touch the same spot as you do when you say 'badly' in your mouth but raise your back of your tongue close to somewhere further back and up inside of your mouth(hard palate). In phonetic terms, these two different way for l sound are called light 'l' and dark 'l' respectively. The more you go to right in the list above, the more becomes dark. The tendency to use so-called dark /l/ varies depending on speakers and in different position of /l/.

The dark quality of /l/ is one of ways to tell foreign accent but it doesn't really contribute misunderstanding of speech. However, it did to me. Like one day I was in my friend's car heading to skating practice, a friend of mine and me hadn't talked each other so much beforehand, so we didn't really know each other. I was talking about TOEFL test but she thought I said 'tofu' instead of 'TOEFL' because I was at stage of trying to produce dark /l/ not touching the tip of the tongue when I pronounced l in TOEFL which sounded like 'tofu'. As a result, my friend got puzzled and lost.
Now it sounds like a very funny story but looking back it was quite embarrassing moment. But if I think of my friend, I can imagine how hard it was to put words all together in order to make sense of it. Talking about tofu? and totally unrelated words like reading, writing, score and test not like cooking, dinner or something.
I guess the degree of dark 'l' is not the thing I can learn with books or in class but from talking to and hearing from people. Sorry my friend.


음성학적으로, 영어에는 두 개의 l 발음이 있다. 확신컨데, 대학에서 음성학을 공부하지 않은 사람은 동의하지 않을 거다.
만약 너가 그런사람들중에 한 사람이라면 아래 단어들을 말해보면서 스스로를 테스트해 볼 수 있을 것이다.

badly late clear wool bulk

각 단어에 L 발음에 집중하면서 발음해 보아라.
'badly' 를 발음할 때 분명하게 혀끝을 윗니 뒤부분에 대는 것을 느낄 수 있을 것이다. 그와 반대로, 'wool'이나 'bulk'를 발음할때는 같은 지점을 닿을수도 안 닿을수도 있지만 혀 뒤분을 입속의 입천정 뒷부분에 올리는 것을 느낄 수 있을 것이다. 그래서 영어에는 두 개의 l 발음이 있다.
발음용어로는 각각 light 'l' 과 dark 'l' 로 불린다. 단어목록의 오른쪽으로 갈 수록 점점 dark 'l' 현상이 심해진다.
dark 'l'을 사용하는 경향은 사람이나 'l'의 위치에 따라 달라진다.

dark 'l'의 정도는 외국인 발음을 구별하는 한 가지 방법이지만, 그렇게 오해를 유발하지는 않는다. 하지만, 나에게는 그랬다.
예전에 스케이팅 연습가는 길에 친구 차에서 내가 한참 TOEFL시험에 대해서 얘기하고 있었는데 내 친구는 TOEFL을 tofu(두부)라고 잘못 이해한 거다. 그때 내가 한참 dark 'l'을 연습할때여서 혀 끝을 윗 니 뒤부분에 안 댔더니 tofu처럼 들린 것이다. 결국, 내 친구는 멍해서 촛점을 읽어버렸다. 지금은 정말 웃긴 얘기처럼 들리지만 그 때는 정말 창피했다. 하지만 내 친구를 생각하면 모든 단어들을 짜 맞춰서 이해하려고 얼마나 힘들었을까 상상이간다. 두부얘기? 근대 전혀 상관없는 읽기, 쓰기, 점수 그리고 시험, 요리 저녁 뭐 이런 단어들이 아니고?
dark 'l'의 정도는 책이나 수업에서 배울 수 있는 것이 아니고 친구들하고 얘기하고 들으면서 배울 수 있는 것 같다.

Two ways to say English /r/

It is very tough for Korean and Japanese to pronounce English /r/ sound since in their languages, there is no /r/ sound. I am a Korean so like other Koreans I also have a hard time to pronounce English /r/ sound. So, I have read some books and asked my friends about it to fix the problem. The books I recently bought say that there are two quite different ways to produce English /r/ sound. First, the tongue tip curls back into the mouth behind the alveolar ridge with the lips slightly rounded. Second, the lips are more rounded and the tongue tip remains low in the mouth, and the body of the tongue(the middle of the tongue) bunches up near alveolar or alveopalatal area. They say the first way is more common and described in more pronunciation texts but the second one is less common but some still use the second one.
I really don't know which one I use because I can't see inside of my mouth. Some of my friends who I asked about it don't know either for the same reason.
I really think that if you think about it too much, it gets more difficult, so just say it.

Which one are you?

The Phonetics Animation Flash Project

영어 r 소리는 한국인과 일본인에게 아주 어렵다, 왜냐햐면 r 소리가 한국어와 일본어에 없기 때문이다. 다른 한국인들과 마찬가지로 나도 r 발음을 하는데 어려움을 겪고 있다. 그래서 문제점을 고쳐보려고 책도 읽고 친구들에게도 물어보았다. 최근에 산 책들을 보면 r 발음을 하는데 두 가지 방법이 있다고 한다. 첫번째는 혀끝을 말아서 올려서 뒤로 빼고 입술을 약간 동그랗게 만드는 것이고, 두번째는 입술을 더 동그랗고 만들고 혀끝은 내리고 혀 중간을 윗니 뒤 부분이나 조금 더 뒤 근처에 올려주는 것이다. 첫 번째 방법이 조금 더 일반적인 방법으로 여러 발음책에서 찾아볼 수 있는 방법이고 두번째 방법은 조금 덜 일반적이지만 여전히 여러사람들이 저렇게 발음한다고 한다.
입속을 볼 수 없으니 내가 어떻게 발음하는지는 정말 모르겠다. 내가 물어본 다른 친구들도 같은 이유로 알 수가 없단다. 내가 생각해보건데 너무 신경쓰면 더 안되니까 그냥 내 뱉어라.

너는 어떤거냐?