Simple site launched to help educate on pronunciation

Anarax

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Having got fed up with people mispronouncing Taekwondo, I put this site live this morning. Feel free to use it to point people to when they ruin the name of our beloved art and sport:

How do you say Taekwondo?
Are you serious? This seems like a really pretentious thing to do. Do you know how many people mispronounce Karate? Ruin the name? Dramatic much?
 

TrueJim

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tay-Gwon-dough

Yes...no? I hear some people pronounce it that way.
 

Anarax

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The presentation isn't at all pretentious.
I meant the act of creating a website for something as simple as a mispronunciation of one word and using terms like "ruin". It seems over the top and dramatic
 

Gerry Seymour

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I meant the act of creating a website for something as simple as a mispronunciation of one word and using terms like "ruin". It seems over the top and dramatic
I understand. When I checked the site, though, it seemed well executed. No arrogance or drama in the presentation. But then I can get a bit persnickety about things like that (and am one of the people mispronouncing it).
 

Monkey Turned Wolf

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Are you serious? This seems like a really pretentious thing to do. Do you know how many people mispronounce Karate? Ruin the name? Dramatic much?
I found it funny actually.
@andyjeffries, it would be cool if you added in pronunciation of other TKD terms, like poomsae and ping-an
 
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andyjeffries

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tay-Gwon-dough

Yes...no? I hear some people pronounce it that way.

I think that's a regional dialect thing. Like some Koreans say more like "Gangnam" and others more like "Kangnam" (never an aspirated "k" but at least more "k" than "g").
 
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andyjeffries

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andyjeffries

andyjeffries

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Are you serious? This seems like a really pretentious thing to do. Do you know how many people mispronounce Karate? Ruin the name? Dramatic much?

In my opinion, it would feel pretentious if I plastered my name all over the site.

The issue is important.

The WTF even put out an article in the 1980s on how to correctly write Taekwondo as all one word and how to call people who do Taekwondo. To them the name of the art and the people who do it is important, I just find the pronunciation to also be important. I can imagine they do too, but at that time didn't think anyone was mispronouncing it.

6356271573_e7dd90fb49_b.jpg
 

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I think that's a regional dialect thing. Like some Koreans say more like "Gangnam" and others more like "Kangnam" (never an aspirated "k" but at least more "k" than "g").

I can buy that as an explanation. Our KJN, who is a native born Korean speaker, pronounces it Tae-Gwan-Dough.
 

Gerry Seymour

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I found it funny actually.
@andyjeffries, it would be cool if you added in pronunciation of other TKD terms, like poomsae and ping-an
Interestingly, I pronounce the "ae" properly in "poomsae" and improperly in "taekwondo". As I think through the few terms I know, I think alternate pretty evenly between "ay" and "eye" as the pronunciation.
 
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andyjeffries

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Interestingly, I pronounce the "ae" properly in "poomsae" and improperly in "taekwondo". As I think through the few terms I know, I think alternate pretty evenly between "ay" and "eye" as the pronunciation.

That's funny (that you alternate pronunciation)! The good thing is that Korean (except for the "sound changes") is very consistent in pronunciation. Ae should always be Ay, never Eye (there is no "Eye" sound in Korean).

Sound changes - certain consonants change sound when placed next to certain consonants. The vowels never change sound. As an example - Hanguk = Korea, mal = language but it's not pronounced as Hangukmal, but Hangungmal.
 

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i get irritated by people who mix and match premise and premises, particularly the seemingly high number of people who use premise as the singular of premises when refering to a building, but that is as nothing to my ire at people who say " i have two choices" when they have ,ONE choice but two options from which to choose, . I did for some while seek to educate people , but found that this made me unpopular.

so i only do it now if i want to annoy them
 

Gerry Seymour

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That's funny (that you alternate pronunciation)! The good thing is that Korean (except for the "sound changes") is very consistent in pronunciation. Ae should always be Ay, never Eye (there is no "Eye" sound in Korean).

Sound changes - certain consonants change sound when placed next to certain consonants. The vowels never change sound. As an example - Hanguk = Korea, mal = language but it's not pronounced as Hangukmal, but Hangungmal.
As I understand it, some of the same happens in Japanese. Sometimes a K sound is a G (or maybe it's the other way around), for instance. I think it depends upon the following sound, at least in some cases. (Can you tell how sketchy my knowledge is?)
 

Gerry Seymour

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i get irritated by people who mix and match premise and premises, particularly the seemingly high number of people who use premise as the singular of premises when refering to a building, but that is as nothing to my ire at people who say " i have two choices" when they have ,ONE choice but two options from which to choose, . I did for some while seek to educate people , but found that this made me unpopular.

so i only do it now if i want to annoy them
The two that bug me most, no matter how much I try to just let it go, are "irregardless" in place of either "regardless" or "irrespective", and "infer" in place of "imply" ("She inferred that she wanted us to do that for her.").
 
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andyjeffries

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As I understand it, some of the same happens in Japanese. Sometimes a K sound is a G (or maybe it's the other way around), for instance. I think it depends upon the following sound, at least in some cases. (Can you tell how sketchy my knowledge is?)

So that is sometimes the case - there are sound changes and it can be affected by the letters around it.

It's also a dialect difference, the same word said in isolation can be pronounced in different ways. I meant to talk about it in my Korean lesson I just finished, but I completely forgot (we ended up chatting about European travel, the differences in Korean and UK companies and eating strange foods). I'll ask if I speak to my tutor again later.
 

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