Tag: engrish

When my husband first came to Australia about 6 years ago he didn’t speak much English. I did not know him back then so it’s hard for me to imagine him not being able to say much! This is a story he told me about being in English class in Brisbane. I’ve mentioned before that Koreans often have trouble with F and P. Usually they pronounce the F as a P when first learning English. There is good reason for this as they don’t have the F sound in Korean and when English words with F are translated to hangul the Korean P sound ㅍ is used.

He was lying anyway, I know his favourite food is not fruit… it’s meat! Lots and lots of meat!

I can’t help wondering though, why this English teacher didn’t know that Koreans have trouble with F and P? Was she new at teaching English? There are many many Koreans in Australia learning English and you’d think she’d have some experience with this before. Anyway he got quite upset!

Koreans have a lot of difficulty with ‘F’ sounds and will pronounce as a ‘P’ sound. Even though my husband knows how to say an ‘F’ sound he sometimes slips up. ‘D’ and ‘T’ sounds can be similar too. He likes me to correct him so he can improve his English and he is usually very good at saying the word correctly immediately.

Not always though…

One day while watching TV:

However, tables are turned when I try to speak Korean.