Who Is This 'See-Oww' Guy?

I can't stand it any longer. Be it on radio or television, every commentator in the country continues to mispronounce the name of Korean import Hyuk-soo Seo.

Following the lead of whomever said it first (perhaps someone at Foxtel), commentators refer to the Queensland Roar defensive midfielder as something along the lines of 'See-Oww', which is certainly not music to the ears of Korean speakers.

The common mistake made here is expressing the 'eo' part of the Korean's romanised family name as two syllables rather than one. In Hangeul, the Korean script, Seo is the mono-syllabic combination of one consonant ('S') and one vowel ('eo'). The latter of these has no direct equivalent in English. Unlike an English word like 'neon' the 'eo' in Seo does not indicate two separate sounds. It represents one very short o sound, as in fault. So (!), it seems that the problem confronting commentators is how to make the listener aware that they're actually referring to a player rather than a short word in English that has various meanings and uses. Perhaps this explains the See-oww innovation.

It's a small matter, but there's no harm in trying to get it right!

For your interest, the family name Lee (e.g. Tottenham's Lee Young-pyo) is actually pronounced 'Ee', which obviously sounds and looks plain weird to English speakers. A very common Korean name is Choi (Jin-cheol), which just about everyone articulates to rhyme with 'Joy'. Well, this isn't correct either: Choi is more correctly pronounced as 'Chae' (rhyming with 'Jay'). Thankfully, Park (Ji-sung) is a lot easier, but since the 'r' is silent even that is a bit of a trick. Given all of these subtle complications and bizarre romanisations, it's not difficult to appreciate why many Koreans are so easy going about the continual mispronounciation of their names in English.