*ook

The other day, I was practicing movie scripts with my students. I’m a bit of a stickler for correct pronunciation, especially since that’s the main point of having them read these things anyway. I’ve pretty much spent all month on this monologue from "Bridget Jones," which is costing me what few heterosexuality points I seem to have left: "...I mean you wear stupid things your mum buys you - that tie's another classic..." My students are all at a really low level, so invariably the preceding line is originally read as "dat tie’s another class-ie" or "... clash-ie". Though the ending vowel in "classic" doesn’t really exist in Korean, my students (generally) have pretty good ears I can get them to say "classi[c]" except for the final consonant. At least in Seoul Korean, /k/ is typically unpronounced when at the end of a word. My students mock me and/or giggle whenever I refer to myself as a "mee-gook" (American), not only because the term is something of a mild pejorative but also because I pronounce the hell out of the /k/ at the end.

So, after thinking of different ways for my students to say "classic" with reasonably accurate pronunciation, I thought it would be fun to have my students mimic my horrible Korean. It seemed to be the quickest way to get them to hear word-final /k/. Though I couple months ago the word "gook" ("nation") made me a tad uneasy, apparently that’s no longer the case: "Alright, everyone. Repeat: ‘gook’." "Gook." "Gook, gook." "Gook, gook." "Gook." "Gook." It only occurred to me until seconds later what was happening. But now those gooks (jk) sound like Renee Zellweger herself!

Incidentally, my only two students to have dropped out so far are named Hur Tay Jew and Ee Tay Jew ("Hurt a Jew" and "Eat a Jew"). Might they have left because I almost giggled when they introduced themselves?