Korean Script, or "Hangeul"

It is truly amazing to me sometimes the number of English words that are written in "Hangeul", or the Korean alphabet. Occasionally my students will ask me whether a word they know is English or not, which is kind of amusing, because it often is.

This fact of life here is both good and bad for English teachers such as myself. The good part is that students are already familiar with many vocabulary words in the English language; the bad part is that their pronunciation is often wrong (from my perspective), as the Korean alphabet/language lacks some of the letters/sounds we use in English.

Here are two examples from things just in my apartment.

The first is a box of facial tissues. There are the English words, and then above them the Korean characters that spell out "Mi-yong TTi-syu" or "Mee-yong Tee-syu".
The second word is "tissue", though the spelling and pronunciation of the product are different.

Similarly, for a package of cashew nuts, the Korean characters say "KKae-syu Neo-tteu" or "Kae-syou Nu-teu".

Cashew nuts. Brilliant. But no wonder my students are sometimes confused about what is English and what isn't.