Ashhong said:
Eh? Seohyun is simply pronounced Suh - Hyuhn if you are going by the actual characters. The only reason some might pronounce is differently is because of an accent or something like that. And the R in Yuri is pretty similar to a trilled R, but I cant really explain it any better than you did.
Though you just have to watch like 1 episode of any variety show they have appeared on and you can hear how to pronounce their names.
Oh and the thing with Jessicas name is that Koreans see the double SS and immediately see it as their S equivalent character which I cant type out. However in Korean a double SS has a SH sound, which is why they call her Jeshica for her full name, or just Sica when they split her name in half.
Ham? Is that a nickname for Nicole? Cant tell who that is.
No, ssang shiot (ㅆ
is just a 'harder' version of its twinless consonant cousin, as all the 'ssang' letters are. They say
Jeshica because they pronounce 'shiot' (ㅅ
as 'sh' (rather than 's') anytime it precedes their 'long e' vowel (ㅣ
or the four vowels that signify iotation (ㅑ ya, ㅕ yeo, ㅛ yo, and ㅠ yu.)
So, e.g., Washington D.C. is rendered in hangul as '워싱턴 D.C.'
But shampoo is rendered in hangul as '샴푸'.
And the term for writing ('쓰기') would not be pronounced 'sheu-gi' but 'sseu-gi'.
I do agree with you about the vowels in response to Dice's post. The most I can add is that, as with consonants, Koreans often express vowel sounds in very slightly different ways depending on what (if any) letters precede the vowel and what (if any) letters come afterward.
EDIT: Scratch that, I do agree with Dice that the 'uh' in Seohyun would be slightly softer than what we would pronounce simply looking at the word 'uh'--I form her name more with the front of my mouth than with the back, if that makes any sense. But again, I think it depends on what comes before and after the vowel.
