oolpeu!

A wolf has escaped from a Daejeon zoo according to news seen over at ROK Drop.

An article says in part:

Authorities are searching for a wolf that escaped from Daejeon's O-World theme park on Wednesday morning. 

At 9:30 a.m., the Daejeon Metropolitan City government sent out an emergency alert to inform people of the search and capture operation within the zoo’s compound. The theme park houses several rides and a zoo. 

O-World reported the wolf’s escape to fire authorities at approximately 10:24 a.m. on the same day.

Along with O-World staffers, fire authorities have deployed 11 personnel to search for the wolf on the loose using nets.

According to O-World, the escaped wolf is two years old and was raised in captivity. It is reported to have escaped while moving into a feeding ground shared by other animals. Although O-World said the wolf was presumed to still be inside the zoo, it was spotted outside the theme park later that day, according to Daejeon Fire Headquarters.

At the time of the escape, O-World immediately evacuated all visitors and blocked further entry. No injuries have been reported so far.

"Presumed to still be inside the zoo." Life... uh... finds a way.

I'm kinda rooting for the wolf as it finds a way.

Next, we need a tiger to escape.

Trivia: Because of phonetic rules inherent to the Korean language, Koreans can't pronounce certain "w-initial" words like wolf, wood, or woman. These words all get converted to "oo-initial" sounds: oolpeu, oodeu, oomahn/oomeon. As a result, these Koreanized words now all begin with glottal stops (IPA symbol: ʔ, basically a question mark without a dot, like when someone with a Cockney accent says "bottle of water"). This is why I've always wondered why some Koreans who have the hanja character 우/禹 in their names (there are many possible "Woo" characters for Korean given names and surnames—see more here if you trust the AI) romanize it as "Woo," which makes non-Koreans inevitably mispronounce the name. Maybe Koreans think it's more dignified-looking than "Oo" or "Ooh" as a name (and they'd be right). Same goes for Koreans with the name 이/李 ("Ee") who romanize their name as "Lee" or "Yi" or even "Rhee" even though the surname is actually pronounced "Ee" in Korean. All of these romanizations invite mispronunciation. Yeah, I realize that a lot of Asians don't romanize their names for the sake of non-Asians, but in adopting that attitude, they merely perpetuate misperceptions and miscommunications. To be fair, something similar happens when Asians find themselves in the West where, even if they spell and pronounce their names au juste, their names will still end up butchered by our callous and crass Western accents.

Another spot of trivia regarding oolpeu and oodeu above: the "eu" sound shouldn't be over-pronounced. It comes out as a barely plosive whoosh of breath. So oolpeu sounds like oolp with an aspirated "p" at the end; oodeu sounds like ood with an aspirated "d" at the end. Here's another example: Koreans hangeulize the word Christmas as 크리스마스, which would be clunkily romanized as keuriseumaseu, or, with hyphens, keu-ri-seu-ma-seu. Pronounced in a slow, exaggerated manner, that romanization makes sense, but when Koreans say 크리스마스 at a natural speed, it comes out sounding an awful lot like Christmas. So please don't over-pronounce the "eu" when you see it. In Japanese, the final "u" that you see in words like tonkatsu is the same deal: the "u" is, ideally, barely audible, but Western YouTube cooks routinely over-pronounce u-final Japanese words, resulting in abominations like "tohn-kaht-soo" (Japanese Schnitzel). It should be closer to "tohn-kahts."

While we're at it, Koreans can't pronounce "yee-initial" English words, either—like year. It comes out sounding like ear with a glottal stop at the beginning (like a Cockney "'ere, guvna'"). Three years ago sounds like three ears ago.

There you go—more shit you'll forget in a day.