The phrase of the day is: " 민주주의의 의의." Not primarily because of its meaning (roughly, "the significance of democracy") but because it's my latest addition to a reluctantly expanding collection of "impossible to pronounce" phrases.
Note that the syllable "의" is repeated four times. This hangul's official romanization is either "ui" or "wi", but neither of these capture two complicating factors. First of all, neither romanization indicates much about the real sound. I would describe it as something similar to a cross between a French "u" and a Russian "ы", but more diphthongized. But the additional problem is that it's one of those phonemes that shifts around allophonically depending on both word-position and grammatical role, with the consequence that the same symbol repeated four times receives three distinct pronunciations: in the phrase above, transcribed, roughly, "min-ju-ju-i-e-ui-i".
So, perhaps unfortunately, you won't find me discussing democracy's significance – in Korean – anytime soon.
it’s funny
even to korean.