Korean War Week 001 Video - some comments and suggestions

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Hi TimeGhost team,

Great job on the Week 001 video in the Korean War channel, and I actually think Indy’s pronunciation of Korean names is not too bad all things considered. Some tips:

I see that supera354 has already brought up Uijeongbu and Gimpo, and he gives some great advice on pronunciation at Common Korean mistranslations. I think retaining Kim (as opposed to Gim) for the surname is alright because of the international acceptance.

Chuncheon 춘천 春川 was pronounced as ‘chonchon’, I think it’d be a good tip to replace all 'u’s you see in Korean names with ‘oo’ in your head, such that Chuncheon becomes Chooncheon, which is a very close approximation of the actual pronunciation.

The surname Choe in Choe Yong-gon 최용건 崔庸健 was pronounced as ‘cho’, it should be something more like ‘chweh’, or ‘chway’ (without pronouncing the y). The ‘gon’ should be pronounced as geon, but that cannot be helped because the romanisation is in an old form.

Heads up: I’m not a native speaker, but I can read (without understanding) Hangul and I can understand Hanja (I am a native Chinese speaker).

Just a few things I thought would be helpful as well: Indy mentioned the “76th Independent Unit”, I believe he meant the 766th Independent Infantry Regiment or the 766th Unit. Also, KMAG is Korean Military Advisory Group, not Advisors Group.

I also think that providing some sort of naming indication on the animated map of the separate battles that occurred would be a good addition. I know that because the attacks ranged across the entire 38th parallel, it’s hard to talk about them individually, but I had to slow Indy down in that short bit where he started with the Ongjin Peninsula and ended with the situation in Gangneung, and only then I could roughly identify what he was talking about with 5 battles:

  1. Battle of Ongjin Peninsula 옹진반도 전투 甕津半島戰鬪
  2. Battle of Kaesong-Munsan-Bongilcheon 개성-문산 전투 開城汶山戰鬪
  3. Battle of Uijeongbu 동두천·포천-의정부 전투 議政府戰鬪 (1950)
  4. Battle of Chuncheon 춘천 전투 春川戰鬪
  5. Battle of Gangneung 강릉 전투 江陵戰鬪

Keep up the awesome work!
-Taylor

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Thank you for the shout out! And also great advice(and yeah the surname Kim is overwhelming usually said with a clear K from my experience out here. Ive probably heard it once with that “in between” sound that may sound like a G to english ears)

Ive studied two Asian languages. Korean and Japanese

Japanese i took in college so i had a better experience learning it. I actually found it surprisingly easy. I think English speakers stereotype asian languages as scary and hard. But Japanese is easy, consistent, easy and sharp sounds to english ears and pronounciations.

If it wasnt for Kanji(the Chinese characters, or what Koreans call Hanja) id say Japanese would be one of the easiest languages to learn

Korean on the other hand. Maybes its because im self studying and do not have a teacher, nor have enough time for private lessons. But Korean, while grammatically not hard, and the alphabet super intuitive. The sounds are very tricky.

In between sounds
Sounds the change “just because”. And dont get me started on compound vowels like wa, wa, we, wo, weo, wu, etc

Theres so much we native english speakers take for granted. We just know our language works without knowing why. We can identify when sounds change “just because” without thought or effort.

Korean is a great language to humble english speakers.

If any english speaker is curious as what it’s like to learn a language that plays tricks like english(though definitely not as much) Korean is a great one to give you taste.

Never laugh at an Asian failing to say L. Or Korean failing to pronounce Z(Z doesnt exist in Korean, so they substitute with a Z. Meaning Pizza is “Piija” and my last name starts with a Z. So i can tell when a Korean has good english if they can say my last name or substitute with a J).

Because Korean will send it right back at you

Especially Korean D and T.

Sidenote:speaking on Gangneung(wonderful beach city). I was there 2 years ago when the Korean army missile malfunctioned and flew back inland. One of the scariest moments of my life watching that thing come back at me before turning back inland

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