안녕하세요!
미안합니다 for the long hiatus; I’m finishing up my senior year, combating AP tests, and karate-chopping major projects while deadlines pop out of my ears….but still, shame on me for neglecting my blog!
Can you forgive me if I give you a David Tennant GIF?
Let’s be honest; while I would love to be at the proficiency level of coming-home-and-tossing-my-things-aside-and-cracking-open-a-book-written-in-Korean-by-Koreans-for-Koreans (a level of proficiency also known as fluent) Continue reading
안녕하세요!
If you’re just starting to learn Korean, there are probably some phrases you want to learn. Like “Hello,” How are you,” “I really can’t speak Korean at all,” “What on earth did you just say,” and as many people like to look up first, swearwords. Continue reading
안녕하세요!
Well, between being sick for a week and then being extremely busy, I’ve been too swamped to post anything lately. So what could possibly drive me to write a post?
Jay Park.
Have you heard his latest single? Joah? It’s become my anthem since I bought it on iTunes last Saturday, and I have no regrets about keeping it on repeat along with K.Will’s Love Blossom and Standing Egg’s 사랑한대 ft. Windy. Jay Park’s song came just in time to herald some sunnier days and the hopefully imminent arrival of true spring – not to mention the allure of summer… Continue reading
안녕하세요!
If you’ve been studying Korean and trying to connect with native speakers on site like italki, Livemocha, or other language learning networks, you’ve probably encountered the usual, “혹시 카카오톡 있으세요?” Do you have Kakaotalk? And while yes, many people have Skype, Facebook, or at least an email, in Korea, they also use Kakaotalk.
Kakao is a (mostly) free messaging app that allows you to send chat messages, pictures and videos, have voice calls, and send these awesome little moving emoticons – some you can download for free, some you can buy. It’s relatively easy to set up an account, and it allows you to easily connect to other users. I use it to speak with Korean speakers. Some of my other friends use it as well, and we use it to chat instead of Facebook or texting.
Kakaotalk has numerous related apps, from drawing to games (like Anipang!) to a mini social-networking app called KakaoStory, where you can post pictures and stories, comment on other peoples’ stuff, and absorb more of your life into technology. I think I have an overwhelming count of three KakaoStory friends.
Yo! 얼마나 있나?
Basically, if you’re learning Korean, Kakaotalk is a great app, because you can message native speakers and they’re much more likely to respond – and that response is usually faster than just messaging on a language learning site. Also, it’s a great place to make mistakes and then learn from them.
Do you already use Kakaotalk? Or do you prefer to use Line by Naver Japan? I have both apps and I’m curious to see which one people like better.
감사합니다!
{seoul} dream’s 노래 for today:
Leessang feat. Yoon Do Hyun – Someday
Sometimes at big family reunions, you might find yourself staring at a relative and wondering who on earth they are. Hopefully not in English, but you’re wondering this in Korean. 누구세요? Who are you? What do I call you in Korean? Or perhaps you think you know what to call them but apparently you don’t and you should just give up because you brought tears to everyone’s eyes when you called your older sister by the wrong title. Not that I’ve ever done that…
Ahem. So, go ahead and start learning all those titles. I have two sites to get you started. Firstly, here’s a site with a list of major relative titles, from close family members to your eldest brother’s wife and your younger sister’s husband. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include titles for cousins and such, so you should also check out this site, which includes a lot more! Like a video, which is almost always awesome.
Speaking of awesome videos, Talk To Me In Korean has a plethora of these.
Korean Kinship Terms Part 1 (Oppa, Nuna, Hyeong, etc.)
Korean Kinship Terms Part 2 (Parents, Grandparents, Uncles and Aunts…)
And by the way, if you’re a girl, don’t ever call your older sister 누나. Not that I’ve ever done that. 그죠, 언니?
안녕하세요!
If you know a little bit about Korean culture and how Koreans generally refer to each other with titles based on their relationship and gender, you’ll probably be very disappointed in this failure of mine. It’s a mistake on something so elementary (and you know I just wanted to use that word instead of basic—makes me feel like Sherlock Holmes—don’t judge me) that I cringe every time I remember reading the comment on my italki post.
A while ago, I wrote an italki post about how my sister and her husband just bought their first house. I was extremely excited as I began to type.
“오늘은 우리…”
And with the third word, I already made a mistake and essentially changed my gender.
“…누나이랑매형”
오, 오, 오오오오오~!!!! 이거 봐?!
Nuna? Nuna?
What is nuna, you ask. Allow me to explain. Nuna is the name given to a close older sister or female friend of a guy.
Just so you know, my friend, I am female. In Korean, I should call my older sister eonni. 언니.
Perhaps you don’t think this isn’t that bad of a mistake but I was extremely embarrassed.
(Not to mention I used the wrong version of irang/rang to link my sister and my brother-in-laws titles, and his title was also wrong because it should’ve been 형부 for a girl calling her brother-in-law. But you don’t need to know that I did that. It’s just my personal insult to injury. Oh thanks, brain. You da best.)
Have you made any mistakes while language learning?
감사합니다!
안녕하세요!
Have you been using Google Translate to figure out if you said something correctly? Or have you been getting lazy and just typing out everything in English, checking it a couple times by translating it back and forth with Google, and then sending off a message to your language partner? Bad idea. Not an awful idea, because Google Translate is definitely helpful. But it’s also dangerous, because it throws a word back at you and you really don’t know if that word means what it’s supposed to mean in the context that you put it in. I’m speaking from experience.
My poor language partner must always feel like this when he reads my Kakaotalk message
Naver’s online dictionary is awesome. Yes, go ahead and use Google Translate to check things if you must (guilty, I use it sometimes, too) but don’t get dependent on it. There are lots of other online resources that work much, much better. Naver Dictionary is a prime example.
I love Naver Dictionary, henceforth titled as Endic (English Dictionary, which is the version I use because hey, English is my native language…although you wouldn’t think it if you actually heard me trying to talk coherently in real life – learning Japanese, Korean, and Spanish has severely messed with my ability to do the words flowing nicely together thing) for many reasons. Here are some of them.
Endic is pretty fantastic. But it is a little tricky to navigate at first, so give it some time. You’ll love it once you do.
감사합니다!
안녕하세요.
Few people have any idea what goes on in North Korea—not just because they’re ignorant, but because it’s difficult to get any information on the topic. “Is Psy from North Korea?” No, no he’s not. The six people in Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea are. And they grew up very differently than the world-famous Gangnam Style oppa.
Nothing to Envy is a gripping read with information gathered from countless interviews and a huge amount of research. I read it within two days and stared at a wall for a long time when I finished it. These were real people and stories—these are real people and their real stories. Not only are the North Korean refugees in the story alive and free, but their friends and family and countless other North Koreans still live beyond the demilitarized border between North and South, beneath the suffocating cover of their government.
The eye-opening story that really gripped me was about a woman who loved her country. She was an absolute patriot, and loathed those who tried to escape. Yet her story interested me the most because it not only explained how her mind changed and she decided to escape, but because it showed why she believed the propaganda and supported North Korea and its methods in the first place—from a real North Korean’s view.
I highly recommend Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea to anyone interested in South or North Korea, East Asia, or a very good and very real book. 감사합니다.
Extra Reading:
안녕하세요!
Dogs. Cats. People. Students. Eyes. What do these words have in common? They’re in the plural form. That’s right, 2+ of everything. But what about these?
개. 고양이. 사람. 학생.
You could read that as “Dog, Cat, Person, Student” – or you could interpret it as “Dogs, Cats, People, Students” depending on the context that I put it in.
In Korean, the official plural form comes as the addition of “-들” to a word, but it’s not used that frequently in everyday conversation. Can you still use it to clarify what you mean? Yes. Can you use it even if you don’t need to clarify because the context makes it already obvious? Yes. It’s not wrong to use “-들,” it’s just not as common as throwing in 사람 and meaning people, or 개 and meaning dogs. (Counter words and numbers help clarify the plural as well.) Continue reading
안녕하세요!
A while ago, I stumbled across a neat little webcomic site created by another Korean language learner. Korean Comics is composed of several short scenes with a couple characters. All of the Korean used is very simple and easy to follow (I read this comic when I’d only been studying Korean for a couple months and understood most of it); however, for words or phrases that you’re unfamiliar with, the creator added notes. You can check out the vocabulary for each scene on a separate page, read the entire web comic with English notes beneath each picture, or read it all without any English notes at all to challenge yourself. Continue reading
서울드림 