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Pronunciation problems in It is common knowledge that Asian learners of english will run into many pronunciation pitfalls during their english learning experience. This is definitely the case when teaching english in the country of South Korea. Korean and english are about as different as two languages can be, and even when Korean tries to emulate an english word, it sounds very bizarre to the native english speaker. The main pronunciation problem that Korean learners face is that english has many sounds that Korean simply does not have. The english letters F, V, and Z, and the Th sound are absolutely absent in the Korean language. From the very beginning, Korean students will not know how to pronounce these letters properly when they run across them in an english word. Usually a Korean student is about ten years old when they really start to learn english, and by then it is usually too late for them to learn how to properly pronounce these letters that are absent in their native language. When Korean needs to incorporate an english word that contains one of these letters, they change it to fit into Korean pronunciation. Both F and V become a B/P sound, Z becomes a J sound, and the Th is usually rendered as an S. This means that when a Korean student comes across one of these letters in an english word they are automatically going to revert to the familiar Korean pronunciation. It can be a lifelong process to move beyond that impulse. The second pronunciation pitfall that Koreans will run into is that they do not distinguish sounds between certain letters that english really does. In Korean there is a character that sounds like a G or a K, one that sounds like a P or a B, one that sounds like a D or a T, and one that sounds like an R or an L. In Korean these sounds are all the same, the four characters that make that sound are just how they are, and Koreans innately know how to pronounce them. However, after they learn the Roman alphabet they will have to learn how to differentiation between these eight sound, which are only four sounds in their own language. In their mind, they will know that there is a distinct pronunciation difference, but when they actually say it that difference, that they know is there, will be absent. Rice will sound closer to lice, dot will sound like tot, bit will sound like pit, and gate will sound too much like Kate. To a Korean there is no difference in these words, but obviously for proper english pronunciation there definitely needs to be a difference. For Koreans, the main pronunciation difficulties will be because english and Korean are drastically different languages. english is Indo-European and Korean is either an Altaic language or a language isolate, and they share nearly nothing in common linguistically. It is easier for the english speaker to properly pronounce Korean, because there are less sounds in Korean, but for the Korean to properly pronounce english it will take many years of practice and possibly residing in an english-speaking country.