한국인들이 가장 많이 틀리는 영어 발음, 이것만 고치면 바로 원어민!

Going up. The doors are closing. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. The most difficult pronunciations, I believe, are R, L, I, E. Honestly, they're easy to learn if you study the tongue movement and the lip movement. I want to go to the beach.

Hello and welcome back to Lunch Hour English. Today I'm talking with an American voice actor living in Korea. You've probably heard her voice at airports, in English textbooks, and more. She's going to share her story and give us some pronunciation tips today. So let's get started. Welcome, Bora! Hi!

Hi everyone, my English name is Brooke and my Korean name is Bora. I come from the United States, born and raised Floridian. I've been living in South Korea for for 6 years as of next month.

So happy 6-year anniversary!

Thank you.

So where can people hear your voice in Korea?

I think the most famous one that people, especially foreigners, might get a little bit triggered by is at the immigration office in Mokdong. Number 501, go to desk number 3. That's what I do.

Oh my God, that's insane! That's insane! And this whole time I thought it was AI.

No, that's real. I also do Incheon International Airport. Going up. The doors are closing. Yeah, it's funny, right? Another thing that I do quite frequently is English textbooks. Circle and choose the correct answer. A. PTSD coming back. Yeah, PTSD.

How did you get into this line of work?

I was 18. I started watching anime. I got really into Naruto. I would watch the English dub and think they're so fascinating, can I imitate it? And at the same time, I was working at Chick-fil-A, and then when people would call me at Chick-fil-A, I would always answer in different voices and make people think I'm different people. And so my coworkers were like, "Oh Brooke, you're actually pretty good at this." And so I'm like, "Am I? What does this mean? Maybe I can try voice acting." So I did a lot of research, I invested in studio equipment, to train at home, and then I changed my major. I just started doing theater classes, and I actually did vocal coaching with some really popular voice actors, and that is how I trained and developed. I randomly decided to come to Korea, and when I looked voice acting on Craigslist Seoul, there was a studio, and I was like, "Oh, I can do some training here!" So that's basically how it started, and after a couple of years, I built up my network, and I signed with an agency, and I started working with studios here right away.

What a cool story.

Yeah, thank you. It kind of fell in my lap.

Roughly how many voices would you say you can do?

15 to 20, I think. There's like girl voices, boy voices, woman voices, man voices, miscellaneous voices. And so usually I can do like at least 3 in each category. I've got like samples on my phone so I can just hear it. Oh yeah, I can do that voice.

Do you have a voice that is really difficult for you to nail down yet?

British accent.

Really?

I can't do it. There's been instances where the client for a video game wanted me to use a British accent, and I told them I can't do it. They said, "Oh, come anyways and try." I said, "Okay." So I arrived at the studio, and I just totally fudged the British accent. And they said, "Why are you so bad at it?" I'm like, "I told you guys I'm bad." Can't do it. It's really hard.

What about the opposite? Is there one that you feel extremely comfortable with now, or maybe a favorite one?

The one that I'm most comfortable using is just my deep voice. I can easily go in and out of this voice. I use it for almost everything. But the most fun, I would think, is like the girl next door voice. I just want to be so happy and bubbly, and I just use this voice whenever I'm feeling sad in the mornings and I want to just cheer myself up. So yeah.

So when you're kind of warming up your voice, or, you know, you said you had formal training for voice acting, and how do you do that?

There's like lip trills and tongue trills. It means you just vibrate your lips and your tongue. It makes the muscles warm up so that you can just easily read off the words, you don't get so tired. Another thing I do is I do tongue twisters, like Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Sally sells seashells by the seashore. Red leather, yellow leather, blue blood, black blood.

Let me try it. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. That's right. Okay, wow, that's even a lot to remember. Okay, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

Almost 80%.

Okay, one more, one more try. Peter Piper picked a peck of— Now we're talking about pronunciation a little bit. What are What are some pronunciation mistakes that you hear a lot of Koreans make?

The most difficult pronunciations, I believe, are R, L, I, E. Honestly, they're easy to learn if you study the tongue movement and the lip movement because that's literally all it is. So R, your tongue is floating in your mouth, you're not touching anything. And then L, you're folding your tongue to the top of your mouth. L, like this. Right, light, like that.

So for people wanting to improve their pronunciation, you think learning the tongue movements can help?

Yeah, I take it from like a scientific approach. Sometimes you can find like images on Google or Naver of where the tongue placement should be, and if you imitate it, then you can make the sound. I did this for Korean, 파드음 . That's what helped me with Korean, so I feel like this could also help people with English.

That's a really good tip, actually.

So one of the hardest things to say is like beach for Koreans. Like, I want to go to the beach, but they don't say the long E, they say a short I. So it ends up coming out as I want to go to the bitch. Oh really, do you? Okay, well be careful.

Can we teach how to correct that?

They're gonna have to practice how they pronounce E and I first. If you guys pay attention, the direction of the movement for E and I is opposite. I is up and down, E is left and right. So if they just think of it like this, they could probably pronounce beach better. But also the timing of saying the word is faster. So beach is a longer sounding word. I'm going to the beach. It's like an extra half count.

I always say it's like you're smiling because you're happy you're going to the beach.

I'm going to the Beach!

Yeah! Do you think that voice acting has helped you with learning other languages? Especially if you can hear another language and kind of mimic it, you probably sound very natural in other languages.

I can mimic, but then coming to like my own original stuff, then it gets pretty American, I would say. But yeah, I would say the voice acting, it gave me a bit of an edge. It made me aware of the difference in cadence between English and Korean. I just assumed that languages would be up and down like English, but Korean is more like a straight line. I can see it in my mind. When it comes to like speaking English better, being a voice actor definitely helped. I had like a very slight speech impediment when I was a late teenager. And it's funny because CH and TCH impediment, and I worked at Chick-fil-A, so Whenever people would come in, I had to greet them, right? And I would say, "Thank you for choosing Chick-fil-A." I couldn't say it. So doing my voice acting training actually helped me to overcome that speech impediment.

I thought it would be really fun to play a game together. Kind of together, mostly you.

Okay, alright, I'm down.

I'm sure you've watched Friends. Yep. So the famous line from Joey, "How you doin'?" How you doin'? So we're gonna try that sentence in different accents. Okay. So can you start from your roots, the American Southern accent?

How you doing?

Would you say that's like Texas too?

How you doing? Texas is just big, so big everything. But Florida is still Southern but more like contained a little bit.

Okay, how about California Valley girl?

Oh, I can do this really easily.

Hi, how are you guys doing?

Just want to get together, have some girl time.

That was good. Like drawing out the sounds, right?

Yeah, the vocal fry is really strong.

How are you doing with the British accent? I'm sorry, I'm sorry to do this to you.

How are you? Are you doing great? Fresh? Wonderful? This is how British people speak, maybe.

I thought it was pretty good. Thanks. Have you ever tried celebrity voices? Like, I know Jennifer Oh my gosh, I'm working on her voice right now.

She's got the most iconic—

makes me want to eat a hot dog real bad. Makes me want a hot dog real bad.

Makes me want to eat a hot dog real bad.

Nailed that. Thanks everyone at home, round of applause for Brooke Boran.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining me today, and it's been a pleasure. Yes, I will hopefully see you again on here. I'd love to have you back. Thanks!

I'm just here.

Where can people watching find you?

I am on Instagram, ora_in_seoul. I'm also on YouTube and TikTok, Brooke Goodman VA, and I talk about my life in Korea, voice acting, some Korean stuff, so it's pretty cool. Come check it out.

If you ever need a voice actor, you know where to go. All right, thank you so much for watching today, and I will see you next time.

Bye!