본토발음에 목을 매는 분들에게 (Kor/Eng)

Posted: 2002/04/22  By: Roger Soh (Views:2770)

To the Koreans who are going to die to imitate the native pronunciations...

I lived in the States about 10 years and now work in the ESL industry. I absolutely agree
with those Koreans’

opinions here on this board pointing out the problems of Koreans who are trying to die to
learn the native's

pronunciations.

If you are one of those who believe that it's the best way of mastering English only to learn
the native twist-tongued

pronunciations from Americans or Canadians, especially from white people, please dream that
on and on until you realize

it never works. I suggest you to check out the literacy of those American and Canadian native
speakers here in Korea.

I guess many people already know that only few of Americans or Canadians has the quality of
teaching people except

some from the decent high class people (and it's true that most of them are white people).
And then I'm sure they must

have some problems when they couldn't get along even in their own country and came here to
teach English. If you check

the standard of American soldiers in Korea, who were recruited by their own government, you
could agree with me. You'd

better scrutinize their degrees of University as well. I bet there are hundred times more
quack Universities than the

normal in the States.

It's natural that even the illiterates, beggars on the street, and drug users should have the
same native

pronunciations if only they were white people who were born and grown there.

I'm in the middle of 40's. I went to the States at 24, finished a graduate school there and
spent about 10 years doing

my business there then returned to Korea. I couldn't speak a sentence of English before going
there. But after learning

fundamentals enough first, I studied AFKN, TOEFL, and GRE etc. and applied those tests then I
went there and came to

speak English in a month. I studied focusing on understanding the fundamentals of
pronunciations, practicing accent and

intonations and there was no problem of communications with Americans since then. Just like
we could understand Robert

Holly and Idadosi's Korean with no problems even though they couldn't speak Korean in our
native pronunciations.  Of

course there sure were some occasions that I couldn't think out the accurate words
(especially nouns) when talking with

people.  But how many foreigners might know the word like "흙손" , which is we know the
name of a kind of tool when

pasting cements on the wall with?

It's natural that we should not know all of the English words; actually it's a language of
other country.  On that

case we could ask them like this: " Could you tell me the name of the tool we use when
pasting cements on the wall? "

Then your partner will teach you the word. If you are trying to learn and memorize the
expressions everyday only under

the situations that were set up in advance, you could use it again only when the same
situations happen.  I rarely saw

any Korean Americans who could speak English well enough in any situation if he/she is the
first generation immigrant in

L.A.; most laundry owners are only fluent with the situation dialogs with laundry customers.

I'm sure you CAN listen and speak well enough by practicing in those real situations if only
you could read,

understand and express your thinking well on the basis of solid foundations.

I really talk to all the parents, who are dying to the native pronunciation, who even tear
down their children's

tongue who are so young that cannot even speak our own language well, who spend so much money
for the English

kindergarten only because they employed native white people regardless of their real
qualifications, who know nothing

about the reality and only have prejudice on the colour of teachers' faces, that it's the
shortcut to waste your money

and to spoil your children.

To think about some of those stupid white teachers who are provided with apartments, free
airline tickets and much

money freely speaking out those unrefined English to our children, who are dull themselves
but ridicule Koreans by

calling our people as Oriental, Korean by themselves makes me really mad.

Let's have our heads shakes!

We have to learn and use English as it's the international language. But it's not the way
things should be to follow

the current mad blast of learning English.