Correct pronunciation of "Asiana?"
 

From telecasters I've heard: Ozzy/Azzy on/an uh,
Assy/Ossy an/on uh,
Ah she "


Apologies for non-use of an international phonetic alphabet, but, in any case, surely they can't all be correct! :eek:

I would just call them and see how they answer the phone :)

It depends on what language you are using. In Korean, the first part sounds more like "Ah she". But in English, "Asia" sounds just like it is written, with a long vowel for the first "A", so the sounds would be something like "Aye she". Both are acceptable.

This question isn't topical to United; I will move this to Asiana Club Forum.

FlyinHawaiian, Co-Moderator
United MileagePlus Forum

When I called them last week to get seats assigned for an award ticket, the automated greeting pronounced it "ah-zee-ah-na"

The lady answering also pronounced it similar to that as well.

"Aye" is pronounced the same as "eye" - "Aye aye, captain!" - so that's definitely wrong. Google pronunciation - hit the speaker symbol http://ssl.gstatic.com/dictionary/st...nunciation.png]

I would also disagree with the statement "in English, "Asia" sounds just like it is written" - because at least partially similarly-spelled words/names "Asda", "asphalt", "aside", "asinine" are all pronounced differently to "Asia". That point aside, the fact that the name contains the word "Asian", then to pronounce it, as it is written in English, would most likely come up with something sounding like "Asia Nah" or "Asian Ah".

I am getting English lessons from an Irish guy! Love it!

Everyone is always eager to comment about mistakes and such. Yet, I rarely see anyone offer any solution. Please offer your opinion on how to pronounce the A in Asiana.

In Korean, it's written "Ah-she-ah-na". But English speakers seem to pronounce it "Ay-zhee-an-na". Some Korean speakers I know pronounce it that way too, but maybe that's so as not to upset English speakers :p .

I second that.

It's hard to put it in precise phonetical spelling (unless you know can read the official phonetical symbols as appear in dictionaries - which I don't) but those are more or less the two versions I've always heard as well.

The official version is probably "Ah-she-ah-na", because that is how I always hear it called on board or when dealing with their Korean hotline. I have occasionally heard the more "Americanized" pronounciation in US contexts as well though.

I'm a native Korean speaker, and to be precise, the second syllable is more of a soft g and not "she." For example, the soft G sound you get with the words mirage and arbitrage. So it's ah-gghe-ah-na.

You should realize that in comparing any two spoken languages, there will almost certainly be sounds that are available in one language, but not in the other, and vice-versa. In addition, there may be sounds that seem to be very similar, but are formed in an entirely different manner between to two languages. So that for someone who's native language is one, what seems to be a close approximation may not seem to be such a close approximation to the speaker of another language.

For instance, I'm a native English speaker and don't think 'Asiana' has any sort of a soft G sound whatsoever. For my way of hearing sounds, the 'She' approximation is the closest I can come. And when 'Asiana' is written in Hangul, it's spelled, '아시아나', with the consonant of the second syllable being a 'shiot' character, which is almost always transliterated as an 'S' or 'Sh', depending on the vowel following it. Typically when the 'ee' vowel follows it as is the case in '아시아나', it is typically transliterate as 'Sh', because to English speakers, that seems to be the overall best approximation.

Anyways, there's certainly no right or wrong answers with this one. Sometimes I can get a bit perturbed by people who try to insist on a certain spelling of a foreign word where they are simply using a transliteration into another alphabet. Sure, there's some really stupid decisions that are made in doing it, so that most foreigners haven't a clue on how to pronounce the word, and just a little common sense by a foreigner could come up with a much better transliteration. But who says that as a native English speaker that all transliterations should cater to me? There's just as valid other transliterations that may be better approximations for other foreigners who aren't native English speakers, but maybe still use the Latin alphabet.

One thing to note, 'Asia' as pronounced by most English speakers that I'm aware of sounds like "Aay zhuh" (two syllables with a long 'a' at the beginning and a 'z' sound for the 's'. Koreans say '아시아', with three syllables, a different 'a' sound, and no 'z'. Koreans do not even have a 'z' sound in their language. So whoever coined the name 'Asiana', most likely just added the 'na' onto 'Asia'. Naturally English speakers want to pronounce it like, 'Asia' with the 'na' added, but need to modify the last 'a' in 'Asia', and make it a stand alone syllable. Koreans don't really modify the '아시아' sound, but just add on the, '나', and maybe reduce the length/slightly modify the second '아'.

I remember years ago when I was trying to learn some basic Korean. One sound I always had trouble with was the 'riul' character when it came inside a word. It's normally transliterated as an 'l' or 'r'. But no matter what variations I could think of for each of those letters, or any where in between, Koreans always told me it didn't sound right. One time I mistakenly pronounced it as a 'd' sound, and suddenly a Korean friend told me I got it right. I ended up learning that for me, it's a cross between a 'd' and an 'l', sort of a rolling 'd', that best allows me to approximate that sound. This doesn't pertain directly to how to pronounce 'Asiana', but really demonstrated to me how many differences there are between people and how they think it's best to approximate sounds and transliterate between languages/alphabets.

I'm also veering quite off topic here, but the 'riul' is indeed particularly difficult, because there are yet more ways to pronounce it. Your "rolling 'd'" works best when the the ㄹ is wedged between two vowels (e.g. 내리다, naerida), but then there are cases like "정리하다", transliterated as jeonglihada i.e. to clean, pick up, get in order where it is pronounced "Jeong-ni-hada", with the "riul" serving as an n. Or "lunch" in "Konglish" is spelled "런치" and the ㄹ is simply an L.

Oh, and to get back on topic in response to JamesHNL: I do get what you mean about the soft g, because there isn't really an h in there. But you'd probably have to borrow that g from a language like Italian and I wouldn't know how to do it justice in English. I'd still say "Ah-she-ah-na" is the best approximation in English, though your point is well taken.

Totally agree with what you said. I just didn't want to get into too much detail about it. Anyways, I'd like to point out that when the riul takes on the rolling 'd' sound, it still sounds like an 'l' to me when I hear a native Korean saying it, but I need to use the rolling 'd' when I try to speak it. So from a transliteration standpoint, if I was writing down the sounds as being heard, I'd use an 'l', but a 'd' if I was transliterating it for how you should speak it. Which makes the whole transliterating even more imprecise. And ultimately for someone who wants to be able to speak Korean well, there's simply no good option but to learn Hangul and how to pronounce each letter of the Hangul alphabet, along with the rules about how sounds vary depending on their context within a word. Transliteration is a useful tool for those not desiring to learn a language, but a very poor substitute for those who do.

I think the phonetic spelling for the sound you are suggesting would render better if you wrote ah-zhee-ah-na. The "zh" is used to represent the sound in the English words treasure and vision, or in the French name Jacques. Is that close enough to what you intend?

I was listening very carefully during a couple of OZ flights in the past 36 hours. In the safety videos, both English and Korean speakers said "Ah-she-ah-nah". The flight attendants seemed to be saying the same thing.

At ICN, the English speaker who did the recorded overhead messages (and who had a North American accent) said "Ah-SEE-ah-nah", adding a new wrinkle. But Ah-SHE-ah-nah seems to be "right".