How Foreign Words Become Korean

Picture this: you're new in Korea, and you're hungry. You've been slamming 김밥 for days, but today, you're craving ol' reliable - McDonald's.

You don't know where the nearest one is, but their delivery scooters are zooming all over your neighborhood, so you know the goods are close.

You know that people here are friendly, so you work up the courage to ask the lady standing near you at the crosswalk:

“저기요~ McDonald's 어디 있어요?”

“네?” she responds, looking at you like you're speaking Martian.

Panic sets in. You repeat yourself - to no effect. You resort to drawing the golden arches in the air, finally living out your dream of being in a Disney Channel bumper back in 2006.

She thinks... then, eureka! “아아아! 맥도날드!!”

What she says sounds something like “MEK-do-nal-deu”, not the “mick-DAH-nuldz” you're used to (in the case of American English, AKA real English).

You follow her directions, walk yourself into the store, and approach the counter with a smile.

After taking a look at the menu, you giggle to yourself for pretending to peruse. We all know what's about to go down, don't pretend you're eyeing the salad.

You take a deep breath, make eye contact, and give the 알바 girl behind the country your best "Big Mac 세트 주세요!" to order the Big Mac combo.

The 알바 working at the counter looks... puzzled. You try again, this time slower and as clearly as you can.

Still, nothing.

Finally, a Korean man behind you in line leans over and speaks up on your behalf, saying something that sounds like "BEENG-mek 세트"

...and suddenly, the employee gets it.

Welcome to the world of hangulization-the term we'll be using in this article for the way that Korean speakers adapt foreign words to work with 한글. This system often transforms familiar English words into things that sound incomprehensibly foreign to an English-speaker's ears, but perfectly natural to a Korean speaker's.

Understanding hangulization is one of the keys to effective communication for English-speaking learners in Korea, whether you're ordering food, shopping for brand-names, or just having everyday conversations.

In this series, we will build a comprehensive guide to this system, explore the hidden rules that govern how English words become Korean words, and why mastering these patterns will transform your ability to communicate naturally in Korean.

What is Hangulization?

The term 한글화 is a combination of "hangul" and the character 化 (화) which means "change". As a suffix, -화 means "to make into," similar to -ize, -icate, and -ify. So, 한글화 is used to describe the system of bringing foreign words into the Korean language that can be written in hangul and pronounced according to Korean phonological rules.

When McDonald's becomes 맥도날드, every sound change follows these systematic principles. This systematic approach is why Korean speakers pronounce even newly borrowed English words predictably, even when they encounter them for the first time.

Code-Switching

Code-switching is the term for when when speakers alternate between different languages, dialects, or pronunciation systems within a conversation. This is a completely normal linguistic behavior that happens everywhere.

As English speakers, we do this constantly - we might switch between formal and casual speech depending on whether we're talking to our boss or our friends, quote someone using their accent, or adapt our speech when talking to children versus adults.

Research shows that bilingual communities use code-switching as a sophisticated communication tool. Spanish-English speakers might switch languages mid-sentence when discussing topics that are better expressed in one language, or when they want to exclude others from understanding their conversation.

Similarly, many people unconsciously adjust their accents depending on who they're speaking with - it's just part of how humans naturally adapt to fit into social groups.

The type of code-switching we're talking about here, though, is something we usually find annoying as English speakers. Think about those people who just came back from studying abroad - the ones who suddenly pronounce "croissant" with an exaggerated French accent in the middle of an otherwise normal English conversation, or who start saying "Barthelona" after their first "gathpacho." Read the room, y'all.

This is exactly what happens when you use "proper English" pronunciation for loanwords while speaking Korean. When you say "Starbucks" with full English pronunciation in the middle of a Korean sentence, you're forcing Korean speakers to mentally switch between two completely different sound systems mid-conversation - even if it's comprehensible, it's definitely… jarring.

Basic Vowels

English has around 15 vowel sounds (depending on dialect), while Korean has a more manageable set. Korean maps similar-sounding English vowels to the closest Korean equivalent.

Korean completely ignores English vowel length. Whether you say "beat" (long vowel) or "bit" (short vowel), Korean hears them both as using 이 and treats them the same.

This is why "beach" and "b*tch" would both become 비치 in Korean - sometimes causing issues.

Long Vowels & Diphthongs

🚀 Houston, We've Got a Schwablem

English loves the schwa. The schwa sound (represented by ə) is the neutral vowel you hear in unstressed syllables - the 'a' in "about" or the 'e' in "problem." You probably never noticed it, but it's actually the most common vowel sound in English - partially because it's the vowel in "the", the most frequent word in the language. Other places it shows up: "banana" (bə-na-nə), "camera" (cam-ə-rə), and "chocolate" (choc-ə-late).

Korean has zero tolerance for unclear vowel sounds. Every syllable needs a crisp, distinct vowel. When Korean runs into the schwa, it has to make a choice about what clear vowel should replace this mumbly one.

In general, Korean maps this sound to ㅓ. It's the closest sound in the Korean sound system, and feels like the most natural fit. Nice and easy, right?

Well, here's the schwablem: it hasn't always worked this way. Most of these Western words actually entered the Korean language via Japanese - another language with a very simple phonetic system. Because of this, more linguistically conservative parts of the country like 경상도 often use more Japanese-sounding pronunciations of foreign words.

This isn't because of any positive feelings about Japanese, or anything like that - it's more like how some people might still pronounce quesadilla like "kwessadilluh" while younger English speakers will pronounce it more like the word actually sounds in Spanish.

Let's use the word battery as an example. Using the schwa rule we've outlined, we can conclude that the hangulization should look like this:

In Japanese, the word for a car battery, バッテリー, is pronounced following Japanese phonetic rules for handling foreign words, creating something that sounds like "ba-tte-ri". In Korean, older folks (and those in the Southeast) tend to write and pronounce this word as 밧데리, 빳데리, 빳떼리, 빠떼리, etc.

The introduction of these words with this Japanese filter looks more like this:

So yeah, things can get a bit messy. Not all of these words actually came from English directly, which is why I said that Korean generally maps this sound to ㅓ. "Camera" might have come through German, "banana" through Spanish - but they all got lumped together as "Western alphabet words" and treated the same way.

Korean speakers instinctively call anything written in the Roman alphabet "영문" (English writing) or "영어" (English), regardless of whether it actually originated in English, German, Dutch, or came via Japanese during the colonial period.

Don't get too pedantic, nerds. For practical purposes, Korean treats all these Western loanwords the same way: every vowel gets pronounced clearly and distinctly, no matter what European language it originally came from.

Examples of schwa → ㅓ mapping:

• Computer → 컴퓨터
• Camera → 카메라
• Banana → 바나나
• Chocolate → 초콜릿

🦅 American vs. 🍵 Bri'ish

For some of you reading, I'm sure you've noticed the elephant in the room. You might even be pointing it out (dorkily, I might add).

"Ummm, 선생님, there are more varieties of English than American English, you know."

Yeah. I know.

South Korea has strongly favored American English since the 1950s, but the influence isn't absolute. Korean systematically adopted American English pronunciation patterns as it developed an administrative state following the war. The (general) use of American English reflects the reality of which type of English speakers Koreans encountered most at the time.

Let's dig in to some of the interesting differences.

Final "r" sounds have interesting behavior, but most of the time follow the "implied r" you'd hear from most British versions of English. The R affects the vowel sound, but doesn't really come out as its own sound.

• "Car" → 카
• "Park" → 파크
• "Star" → 스타

This is why we ended up with the family name 박 being romanized as Park - Park in most British dialects of English sounds fairly close to 박. Half-Korean American superstar Anderson Paak spells his name in a way that makes American English speakers read it closer to the actual pronunciation.

Unfortunately, the Brits got to the language first, and messed everything up. Thanks, guys.

Where British Patterns Persist

Despite the American preference, some words follow British patterns. In my opinion, this is fairly random, but one clear example is the following:

British "dark Ls":

• Talk → 톡
• Hall → 홀
• Call → 콜
• All → 올

British "u, oo":

• News as "nyooz" → 뉴스
• YouTube as "yoo-tyoob or yoo-chyoob" → 유튜브

American words:

• Hot → 핫
• Got → 갓
• Shop → 샵
• ...however, "shopping" becomes more British-sounding 쇼핑. Happy birthday.