Ask A Waeguk, Vol. 5

Our latest question comes from Dave in Ontario, who is impressed at the news of the Waeguk's Korean lessons, and wonders whether they include the alphabet, and the Waeguk's thoughts thereon.

As always, the Waeguk responds:

I'm learning both written and spoken Korean, which is a bit of a challenge, but also something I'm quite enjoying. The Korean is relatively straightforward to learn, and in fact is something I had a decent understanding of even before beginning the lessons, insofar as being able to sound out words, though not necesssarily to understand them.

One of the interesting things about Korean is how poorly it's transliterated into the Roman alphabet. For example, I live in the city of Busan, but until quite recently I would have been living in the city of Pusan. There is no real distinction in Korean between the English p and b, l and r,and j and z. My students are wont to talk about the "Jewkeeper" rather than the "zookeeper," which is not a mistake that will serve them well in most parts of the English-speaking world.

Traditionally, Korean has been transliterated into the Roman alphabet using the McCune-Reischauer system, but over the past decade or so this has been phased out in favour of the Revised Romanization system, and this is the reason for the Pusan/Busan switch. Essentially, this means that there are easier and simpler ways of having one sound in Korean correspond to its partner sound in English, and showing this on paper.

Learning to read Korean has also helped me sympathize somewhat with some of the difficulties facing any learner of a new alphabet. Most frustrating? Fonts! I can read the Korean equivalent of Times New Roman fairly easily, but anything artsy or stylized throws me off immediately. Writing is also a challenge given that my handwriting isn't exemplary at the best of times and in my native tongue, but at least under those circumstances I can extrapolate from my notes with confidence. In Korean? Not so much.

On the other hand, three tenses total does make for one happy language student...

Got a question for the Waeguk? Ask him here.