New textbook dialogue

[honeymooners]

Excerpt from our new Grade 3 Elementary textbook:

"My name is Thomas Wyne."
"My name is Gim Bora."
"I'm Yahya Muhammad Ahmad Shrahili."

I used to struggle with, "Who is this?" "She is Mina." I wonder how they will do with this new character?

[mteacher]

HAHAHAHAHA!! This made me LOL!!!

Wow really?!??!?!?!!  I havent seen the new books yet!  But I bet it's better than Whadddddid you do dere?

[cocoinkorea]

HAHA jeez I can't even pronounce that last name... good luck to the students trying to learn those names

[Colocelt]

Seems like each school has been able to choose their own text books this year... it will be interesting to see how we can coordinate lesson plan ideas.

[Paul]

Could you not adapt it to Thomas, Bora and Yahya? The 3rd one is plain unnatural in any setting that's not the DMV. Laid back use of "I'm" yet full legal name.

One of my new teacher guidebooks instructs the teacher in Korean to read out a loooong paragraph of native level English instruction about hypothetical scenarios verbatim in order to teach the word "sorry" to 3rd graders. Now, no problem because common sense will prevail here 99% of the time. Having said that though, I have indeed been in the situation where a co-teacher would read the "classroom script" directly from the teachers manual and got annoyed when I didn't. Dare I imagine?

[roymelling]

Seems like each school has been able to choose their own text books this year... it will be interesting to see how we can coordinate lesson plan ideas.

True!  I'm sure many of you sat down with the Korean teachers and chose the top 5 textbooks.    As for co-ordinating ideas, don't worry, many of the topics will be similar...how many?. do you like?, how's the weather, happy birthday.

I'm teaching HS next year so I won't be staying around to enjoy the new es textbooks   Good luck!

[suzettec]

I wish I had some say in the books.  I have the 영어 books.  I'm not very impressed.  And isn't it kimchi... not gimchi?  That would be chapter 6 in the 3rd grade book.

[Tpre022]

It should be kimchi under the official consistent romanization scheme. I'm told that gimchi is actually closer to the correct pronunciation. But yeah, I would really expect to see it spelled kimchi in a textbook.

[cmster]

Are all public elementaries switching to new books this year? I haven't heard anything from my school and my coteacher has no idea what we're using next year (which technically starts in less than half a month). He's retiring this month and I may or may not have a coteacher.

[Paul]

It should be kimchi under the official consistent romanization scheme. I'm told that gimchi is actually closer to the correct pronunciation. But yeah, I would really expect to see it spelled kimchi in a textbook.

In other other scheme (Yale romanisation, the old romanisation, Japanese kanaisation, North Korean romanisation), the k/g, p/b, t/d pairs get switched to the first because its a pure sound at the beginning of a word. Elsewhere in the word it somewhat gets mutated into the latter. My ears would confirm this too (although I noticed variance by region). Level of aspiration (k vs kh) is far more important anyway (yet the new system ceases to mark that explicitly , sigh). "G" is the official under the new system, with the exceptions being companies that already were registered pre-2000 and thus have an international reputation abroad (think Samsung). For them, making the switch is only encouraged.

Note that the new system only had consistency and ease of conversion in mind, as opposed to accuracy.

When Korea is striving to be recognised internationally as a travel destination and popular cuisine, changing the spelling of its most famous culinary product seems utterly foolish to me personally.

[Tpre022]

Wait, so I had that backwards? Gimchi is the new and official?

[Paul]

Wait, so I had that backwards? Gimchi is the new and official?

Hard to say. The grandfathering is definitely OK for registered trademarks and corporations, but as for common words, maybe, maybe not. I know some of my colleagues have started writing it with a g and get quite insistent about it so at least someone in the ranks is pushing it as a no-exceptions rule.