I must admit, as someone who’s been teaching Koreans English for a decade now (more, if you include the Koreans in my classes at Concordia University in Montreal). I’m extremely dubious about this: Student Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones dreams of living and working in South Korea once she finishes university, even though she has never visited the country. But while taking language lessons, the 19-year-old found that she couldn’t pronounce certain crucial sounds in the Korean alphabet. Her dentist suggested it may be because she was born with a slightly shorter than average tongue, caused by having an unusually thick lingual frenulum …
Tag: 한국어 공부
Orcs!
One of the fascinating things that keeps coming up in my Korean lessons is the generation gap. It’s not that I was unaware of this before, but my tutor has made a careful point of noting when she shows me a word that older people either won’t find appropriate in speech, or which she considers a “young people” word. One example is 찌질하다, which is a word I can’t quite translate into English. My tutor explained it as something that someone would say to a friend who is acting like goof or a geek, but at a party a few …
Back in the [Korean Study] Saddle Again
Let’s see, in my notebook there are the following new vocabulary terms: 신상 정보: personal ID information 생물측 정보: biometric information 심리학: psychology 작업 멘트: pickup line 몸이 좋[지않]다: to [not] have a good body 핸드폰 번호 따다: to get [someone’s] phone number 세계 구역기구: The WTO 합병하다: to take over [something], for example, the WTO taking over the UN. 세상: universe (to be used in the context of discussing baby universes) 사고 | 나다: accident | occur (occur being the verb for accident) 화학전쟁: biowar[fare?] 증거: evidence These words, of course, are all related to the two stories I’ve …
You Have Nose Star Calipers? AKA Maybe I Should Practice Korean More?
Today’s fun conversation in Korean: ME: You have a nose star calipers?1. DOLLAR STORE CLERK2.: Huh? Nose star? ME: Yeah, you know. Nose star calipers.3. DSC: You mean a nose hair trimmer? ME: Uh… maybe. Nose hair? DSC: Yeah. Like, this? [Makes snipping motion.] ME: No, no. I mean like this… [Makes a buzzing noise, and spins finger round in a circle quickly.] DSC: Oh! Yeah, right over here. ME: What’s this called? DSC: A nose hair trimmer. ME: Ah. Right. Hair. Stars are in the sky, hair is in my nose. DSC: [With a giddy laugh.] That’s right. Shall …
Looking to Learn Chinese?
Try Chinesepod. I wish there was a good one of these for Korean. In fact, it’d be a great project for someone like Kangmi. (via A Glimpse of the World.)