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So in Korea it's pronounced hyun-dae. But they spelt it 'hyundai' (said hy-un-dai) for western markets to sound more Japanese so their brand was associated with
by second_brekkie 3y ago
So in Korea it's pronounced hyun-dae. But they spelt it 'hyundai' (said hy-un-dai) for western markets to sound more Japanese so their brand was associated with the quality of Toyota and Honda.
- yongjik 3y agoHmm, I don't think anyone with a passing knowledge of Japanese would look at that "hyun" and think it sounds Japanese ... It's spelled that way because it was born before Korea's industrialization, when regular transliteration of Korean was pretty far down the list of concerns. Everybody just grabbed whatever sequence of alphabets that vaguely resembled the original sound, a tradition still continuing with names of people and companies.
- zen_of_prog 3y agoI wonder if that's how we got the pronunciation for Chevrolet as well (: . In Korean it's 현대. Theㅕmakes a yuh sound with a short y, and projecting one writing system onto another can get tricky.
- bazmattaz 3y agoThe radio ads here in the UK say “hy-un-dai” too so that proves that that’s the pronunciation Hyundai want perpetuates