There is a very important distinction between the reading of romanized Korean and English. The Korean romanization system depicts the sound of Korean in English letters to help foreigners communicate in Korean. Because English letters used in romanized Korean are sound symbols, they have to be pronounced in a certain way only.
They should not be treated as those in English words. In English words, the sound value assigned to a certain letter varies according to different words.For example, 'a' in apple ,father, syllable, and date all have different sound values.
Unless you have learnt the English phonetic symbols, you might read romanized Korean 'a' differently from the expected sound depending on what romanized Korean words you have.
For example you might read a as 'a' in apple when you get the romanized Korean word sam (삼) 'three'; or you might read it as 'a' syllable for either a in the romanized Korean word saram
(사람) 'person', etc.
To avoid this type of confusion,some example of english words containing sounds equivalent to some of the romanized korean vowels and consonants are given as follow (approximate guideline only):
Vowels: eo, eu , ae and oe are single vowel in romanized Korean as shown below. Therefore careful attention should be given to these vowels in not splitting them into two. Also, careful attention should be given to u [우] not to be read as English 'you'. Some common vowels which might confuse you are :
a 아 ah, father (but shorter)
eo 어 bird, serve
o 오 ball,pore (but shorter)
u 우 shoe, school (but shorter)
eu 으 broken,golden
i 이 bee , sheep (but shorter)
ae 애 aplle, bad
e 에 bed , egg
oe 외 wet, welcome
Consonants : There wont be much trouble in pronouncing romanized Korean consonants expect some tensed ones which require a relatively strong muscular effort in the vocal organs with out the expulsion of air.
Some examples are given as follow:
kk ㄲ ski, sky ( k after s)
tt ㄸ steak, sting (t after s)
pp ㅃ speak, spy (p after s)
ss ㅆ sea, sir ( s before a vowel )
jj ㅉ bridge, midget ( simillar to a tutting sound in an exhailing way )
(C) Essential Korean Phrase Book
