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Pronunciation problems in South KoreaLearning english is held in high esteem in Korea. schools, parents and businesses spend a lot of money for students, children and employees to learn english. It is considered the best english education when taught by a native english speaker. One of the main reasons for this is pronunciation. As with most non-native users of any language, people tend to carry the intonation, phonological processes and pronunciation rules from their mother tongue into their english speech. Similar to the english alphabet, Korea has a phonetic alphabet. In the Korean alphabet each symbol has a sound, the joining of symbols make a new sound and a combination of symbols make a word. From the perspective of an english speaker, learning to read Korean is relatively easy. Not so similar to the english alphabet are the sounds that are present or not present within the Korean alphabet. The english alphabet has more sounds and the sounds are different. When speaking english, Koreans can naturally say a large number of the english sounds, however critical errors of pronunciation occur. Major pronunciation errors occur when using the english sounds l, z, v, th. Generally Koreans change l to r, z to g, v to b, f to p and th to s. Instead of saying light they will say right. Instead of saying zebra they will say gebra. Instead of saying five they will say fibe. Instead of saying fish they will say pish. Instead of saying three they will say sree. The sounds that Koreans alternatively use are sound present in their native alphabet. The sounds Koreans change are the sounds not present in their native alphabet. From experience, Koreans can learn these new sounds and are able to speak english well with practice. It is important for Koreans to hear correct english pronunciation considering their language is scattered with Konglish. Another influence on Korean pronunciation of english is “konglish”. Konglish is when english words are nativised into the Korean language. From the perspective of a teacher of english in Korea, Konglish is a major inhibitor of learning correct english pronunciation. Although Konglish has many facets, the part that influences pronunciation the most is ‘phonetically different words’. This is where Koreans take an english word and change it suit their native phonetics . An example of this is the word ‘pizza’. In Konglish the pronunciation is ‘pija’. In Korea, there is no native word for pizza so as a Korean child growing up, they learn and think that ‘pija’ is the correct word. When learning english, Koreans are required to re-learn words they believe are to be the correct pronunciation. Example of other words are: taxi = tekshi, coffee = copee, phone = pone. There are a large number of reasons why Koreans have difficulty with english pronunciation but I have only highlighted two of them. When considering phonics, pronunciation difficulties go beyond the sounds listed above. There a number of websites that go into this more in depth such as : http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/l1korean.html http://nathanbauman.com/nathanbaumankoreanpronunciation.html The same applies with Konglish. It effects learning english on a number of levels and not just pronunciation. The information provided above is just the tip of the iceberg.