Japanese Intonation, Chinese, Korean, and French - practise it to be taken seriously

For my own benefit, I prefer to  write Japanese and Korean words with a hyphen in the middle. The hyphen reminds me that each syllable is pronounced with equal emphasis. 

I walked all around a city in Korea looking for a restaurant for the evening. I had learned the words for goodbye and thank you. I wrote them on a piece of paper and read them out with a bow as I left. The restaurant staff all had hysterics, every time.

When I got back to Singapore I asked a Japanese friend, 'Do you know any Korean words?'

'Ah yes, no. Just a few.'

'Do you know why they laughed when I said goodbye in Korean?' 

'Ah - yes.'

'Did I pronounce it like a rude word?;

'Ah - no. Korean, like Japanese, very stuck-ah-to. You speak very like sing-ing a song.'

'Very sing-song!'

So, for the Koreans, listening to me was like me listening to a Welsh speaker.

I remember a Welshman tyring to chat me up on the phone. He said, 'I am feel-ing ve-ry roam-an-tick.' I was thinking, roam antic or Rome antic?

All the double syllable words sounded like a different sets of words. 

Maybe I would be a success doing stand-up comedy in Japan or Korea. I could do it online.

Practising Pronunciation

The serious moral of the story is, if you are doing business in Japan or Korea, and wish to be taken seriously, practice not just the spelling of the words to recognize and remember them, but listen to the intonation. The same apples to any language. Vocabulary will get you understood, especially if you have the words written on your phone and can show a sentence. but to sound authoritative, and to be understood by others with different accents, you should learn the correct pronunciation and intonation. 

That applies when you are an English speaker learning another language. It also has to be explained when teaching foreigners to speak English. 

The Word Welcome

Singaporeans would often start the Toastmasters club meetings with the word welcome. But they said, Well - come. I would be thinking, is that well, like um and ah, you know, I'm thinking about it, come, let's get started. Or is it, well, come, slang for have an orgasm. I would then go back to listening to them, having missed their next sentence or two.

The Word Almost

However, running words together can also change the meaning.

When I was in Asia with my son, a local man said to us, 'You are almost welcome.' My son and I looked at each, and burst out laughing. It took only a second to understand that he meant you are all most welcome. But that second was enough to create a new phrase or sentence in our minds.

We still remember 'almost welcome' years later. A reminder of the event helps lighten our mood, make an evening continue with a smile.

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