::A Geek in Korea::

Some of my students encountered the word "chivalrous" in a story about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  They were reading the story outl oud with me occasionally helping with pronunciation. As soon as I saw the word, I knew there would be a problem. Not only is it a difficult word to explain and to say, there is a special problem relating to the way it would be broken down into Korean characters when kids are trying to pronounce it for the first time.

Instead of saying it "chivalrous", as we would, the tendency in Korean would be to turn the first syllable into "Shi", the second into "bal" (there is no "v" in Korean), third "rus". This is bad, because "Shi-bal" is a Korean exclamatory sort of curse word. It’s the thing you would yell before you attack with an onslaught of other foul sorts of words. The number "18" in Korean sounds also very close to the same word.

Despite my help, the students still had a problem saying the word correctly in English without giggling. I often get students that go to enormous lengths just to get me to say the word "18" in Korean just so they could pretend I said something different. This was the same thing, except they had to talk about King Arthur for paragraphs and his "chivalrous" nature. It was non-stop laughter been the students.