Archive for 'Korean Language'
Question and Answer Sentences in the Standard and Deferential Polite Form Posted by Ginny on Oct 19, 2009
When you want to form a statement in the standar polite form, you stick 요 at the end of the sentence. For example, 이분 보라 씨예요. (이분 = this person. 보라 = Bora. 씨 = Ms. 예요 = copula ‘is’ in the standard polite form) would mean ‘This person is Ms. Bora’. Moreover, if I…
Korean Words Derived from English Posted by Ginny on Sep 17, 2009
The following words are Korean words derived from English. See if you can figure out the English word from the pronunciation of the Korean word. 1. 카리스마 2. 볼펜 3. 카메라 4. 핸드백 5. 카드 6. 컴퓨터 7. 헤어 스타일 8. 테니스 9. 텔레비전 10. 프로그램 11. 커피 12. 헤드폰 13. 엑스레이 14. 노트북 15…
사자성어 Posted by Ginny on Aug 22, 2009
A 사자성어 is a proverb consisting of four letter Chinese characters. Today’s 사자성어 is going to be 出嫁外人, pronounced as 출가외인. This character 出 means ‘to leave, exit’. 嫁 = married. 外 = outside. 人 = person. Altogether, this proverb is saying that a person who is married is basically someone who has left her…
Simple Sentences Posted by Ginny on Aug 7, 2009
Remember the last post on subject marking particles? We’re gonna use them today, so get ready! Before we do that, let’s review a couple things. First, how do you conjugate verbs into the deferential polite? For regular verbs, just add ㅂ니다 (we’ll do irregular verbs at another time). For the verb ‘to sleep’, which is jada…
Constitution Day Posted by Ginny on Aug 1, 2009
Last month South Korea celebrated Constitution Day. Constitution Day in Korean is Jehunjul (제헌절). This national holiday celebrates the South Korean Constitution. The South Korean constitution was first drafted in 1948, but there have been revisions to the constitution ever since. The South Korean constitution lays out a basic framework for the Korean government and lists…
General Guidelines for Korean Counters Posted by Ginny on Jul 25, 2009
Counters that use Sino Korean numbers tend to be counters that measure a unit of time. For example, the Korean counter months is wol (월). Ex: January is ilwol (일월). Counters that use Native Korean numbers tend to be counters that measure an amount of time that has passed. For example, the Native Korean counter for…
Korean Surnames Posted by Ginny on Jul 19, 2009
Have you ever wondered what Korean surnames sound like? You may have see some of them below. Some of them are very common, and some are not. On official documents like birth/marriage/divorce certificates, it’s typical to see the surname in Chinese characters. How many have you seen before? Kim (김) (金) Park/Bak (박) (樸) Lee/Yi (이)…