# Pronunciation of Korea



## Al Lone Lee

Years ago, I was watching a clip of a *North Korean news broadcast and the broadcaster pronounced the word "Korea" by replacing the short vowel ă sound with an additional r sound*. Phonically he would have said [koh-reer], descending(\) his tone then inflecting (^) only once between the r sounds [r-ee-r].

I thought it was neat and incorporated the pronunciation into my everyday language (to be silly).

*I've hear the word "Korea" pronounced this way three additional times. *

*Once by a female Japanese women, she was speaking English. *
*Another was from a Han Chinese man, he was speaking Korean. *
*The third was from a British female, speaking English.*
I hear the word "Korea" pronounced often, but almost never the way I had mentioned above. So, in addition to asking native speakers of the aforementioned languages I wanted to ask a native Korean speaker, that has learned English, *if they have heard this pronunciation before* and if there is anything worth mentioning about it or if it's just another way humans pronounce something.


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## mink-shin

Hmm... I didn't know it's pronounced in several ways.

But there's something that has come across my mind.

Long time ago, Arabian merchants used to trade with 고려, under the rule of which Dynasty was Korean peninsula. They called 고려 Corea, and these days the modern spelling of which is Korea. Korea is pronounced as [kərí:ə] in English. But we pronounce 고려 in a similar way as you've mentioned I guess.

Maybe it could be the reason you've heard it pronounced in two ways.


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## Multilate

I hear it only from those who pretend hard to be good at English pronunciation but who are actually not really good at English pronunciation.
It's a common mistake among Korean people because they think this 'r' sound in American English sounds cool and, they overuse this 'r' sound for everything.


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