Verb Conjugation Website!

Hey all! I found this great website for conjugating Korean verbs. It works really, really well. You can find it at the link below:

Verbix — conjugate Korean verbs

Tags: conjugation, grammar, korean, verb

KoreanClass101?

Hey, just a general update here. I am going to be giving KoreanClass101 a try. I really like Talk to Me in Korean but I want to expose myself to more conversations as well as listen to the different ways to pronounce things. So, I will update on here and let you know how KC101 is and if you should take time out of your day to use it ^_^

Thanks!

가사합니다!

Tags: general, kc101, koreanclass101, update

Easy As One, Two, Three

Alright, with this post we are going to talk about numbers in Korean. More specifically, however, we are going to be addressing Sino-Korean Numbers. So, Korean has two number systems: Sino-Korean and Native Korean. If I am not mistaken, Sino-Korean means that the words were influenced or taken from hanja (한지어). Now, this is just from my research, so please correct me if I am wrong, but this is when you would use Sino-Korean Numbers:

• Any number higher than 100.
• Counting any unit of time other than hours.
• Creating names of the months.
• Money/currency
• Math
• Measurements
• Phone numbers

NOTE: This list is used courtesy of Warp3′s post here. 

Alright, now that we got past that let’s move on to the actual numbers!

0. 영 [yeong] / 공 [gong]
1. 일 [il]
2. 이 [i]
3. 삼 [sam]
4. 사 [sa]
5. 오 [o]
6. 륙 [ryuk] / 육 [yuk]
7. 칠 [chil]
8. 팔 [pal]
9. 구 [gu]
10. 십 [sip]

100. 백 [baek]

1000. 천 [cheon]

There they are! There are a couple of things I should explain. The first thing is that 0 can be pronounced as either 영 or 공. 6, however, is different. According to TTMIK, you would pronounce it as 육 whenever it is the first or only number. If it follows another number then it is pronounced 륙.

Now, let’s talk about how the numbers work. Notice that I only show 0-10, 100, and 1000. This is because to make numbers such as 11 or 25, then you would type: 십일 and 이십삼 respectively. I hope that makes sense. Let’s do some practicing.

1,376 – 천삼백칠십륙
613 – 육백십삼
9,001 – 구천일

Alright, I hope that helps to explain things to everyone! 안녕히 겨세요.

Tags: korean, numbers, sino-korean, talk to me in korean, ttmik, vocabulary

Entertaining Rosetta Stone Translation

Alright, so I like to use Rosetta Stone to practice my listening and my speaking, but I do not use it as the groundwork for other things. I may glean vocabulary from it, but it’s not very good from a grammatical standpoint. In any case, I came across an entertaining translation.

In Rosetta Stone, it gives you a sentence (or a word) and pictures, and you have to guess what the sentence is saying using the pictures. Let’s analyze this sentence real quick then laugh at it. Here is the sentence:

여자아이가 달려요. -yeo-ja-i-ga dal-lyeo-yo (not sure on the romanization here… sorry!)

Anyways, if we look at this, we can take it apart and figure out what it is saying. The picture shows a girl running, so we can immediately assume this sentence is saying something like, “The girl is running.” Now, if you know that 여자아이 means “girl” and that 가 is the subject-marking particle, you can guess that 달려요 is some form of “running”. I’m assuming (safely) that it is conjugated to present-tense. I haven’t learned verb conjugation in depth yet, so I cannot analyze this as much as I would like to, but I will be able to in the future. Anyways, we can translate this sentence ourselves into “The girl is running.” or “The girl runs.” However, when you have Google translate it for you, you get something quite entertaining…

여자아이가 달려요. → Runnin’ down a little girl.

So, just thought that was entertaining and slightly pedobear-ish of Google.

Tags: funny, funny translations, girl, girl is running, korean, pedobear, rosetta stone, running, subject marking particle, verb

To Be or Not to Be?

Yes, I went with the age-old cliché for the title of this post. I know, I’m extremely original, aren’t I? Anyways, now we are going to be getting into something interesting! After this post (or lesson 5 on TTMIK) you will be able to say “A is B” or “I am ABC”.

In English, we use the verb “to be” for each of these. For example, “A is B”. “is” is a form of the verb “to be”. We may not think about it this way because it is so natural, but that is how it works on a language-level (that doesn’t make sense). Anyways … moving on. In Korean, there are two different forms of the “to be” verb, and you chose one based on how the preceding syllable ends. Let’s look at these two phrases:

이에요 – i-e-yo
예요 – ye-yo

Both of these are used as “to be”, but you have to determine which of them to use. Also, before we move on with some examples to help explain, let’s talk about the word order in the sentence. In English, we have what is known as a SVO language, or subject-verb-object. What is meant by this, is that if we were to say, “I go to the store.” the verb “go to” is placed between the subject “I” and the object “the store”. Korean, however, is an SOV language (or possibly OSV as well, though not usually). What is meant by this is that in Korean, you would say (literally), “I the store go to.” Now, since Korean has particles (this will be explained later, or you can go to TTMIK and listen to their lessons on them), you do not have to put things in the exact order. For now, we will concentrate on it being a SOV language and use that as the basis for our examples.

For the examples, let’s look at some vocabulary:

물 – mul - water
가방 – ga-bang – bag
사무실 – sa-mu-sil - office
학교 – hak-gyo – school
저 – jeo – me

Now that we have some vocabulary, let’s put together some sentences! First, let’s start with things that have a consonant at the end of their last syllable (물, 가방). If you wanted to say something like, “It’s water” then you would use the following sentence:

물이에요. = 물 + 이에요 [mul + i-e-yo]

Notice that we are using 이에요 instead of 여요. This was explained in the TTMIK lesson as happening because saying 물이에요 is much easier than saying 물여요. I agree with them! Let’s try it again with 가방.

가방이에요. = 가방 + 이에요 [ga-bang + i-e-yo]

Alright, now that we got that out of the way, can you guess how we would say “It’s a school” or “It’s me”? — That’s right! For “It’s a school”, you would have:

학교여요. = 학교 + 여요 [hak-gyo + ye-yo]

And for “It’s me”, you would have:

저여요. = 저 + 여요 [jeo + ye-yo]

So, that’s all for this lesson, I hope you learned something. I recommend you listen to lesson 5 on TTMIK for more information and pronunciation tips!

Tags: bag, grammar, it's, korean, me, office, phrases, school, talk to me in korean, to be, ttmik, vocabulary, water

Excuse Me

Following on the last post, this is another very important survival phrase for if you ever travel to Korea. Coincidentally, this also comes from lesson 4 of TTMIK! Now, if you haven’t already guessed, this post is about how to say “excuse me”. However, it is important to note that “excuse me” in Korean can not be used in all of the same situations as it can in English. Also, there are four different ways that TTMIK has listed to say “excuse me”. Let’s start with the first phrase and allow me to explain when you can use it.

The first phrase is:

저기요 – jeo-gi-yo

This phrase is “excuse me”. However, it is important to note the situations that 저기요 can be used. Here they are:

• When you want to get someone’s attention and talk to them or let them know something.
• When you want to call the waiter in a restaurant or a cafe to order something.

It’s important to note that 저기요 can ONLY be used in those two situations, no others. For the other two situation, there are a group of three phrases that can be used:

잠시만요 – jam-si-man-yo
죄송합니다 – joe-song-ham-ni-da
잠깐만요 – jam-kkan-man-yo

Now, let’s look at these three. The first and last phrase (잠시만요 and 잠깐만요) both mean “Just a second.”. The second phrase, 죄송합니다, means “I am sorry.” It’s important to note that this is not the same “I am sorry” that we went over in a previous post. These three phrases can be used in the following two situations:

• When you are passing through a crowd of people.
• When you are leaving the room for a second.

Tags: excuse me, korean, phrases, talk to me in korean, ttmik, vocabulary

I’m Sorry! … For What?

I thought this was rather entertaining, so I figured that I would write a post on it. If you haven’t done so yet, I recommend that you go listen to lesson 4 on TTMIK, it is quite entertaining as well as very educational. Anyways, this lesson talks about how you would say “I’m sorry” as well as “excuse me”. These are two phrases that are essential to learning or travelling to any foreign place, however you have to make sure you know the rules behind them!

Let’s start with a very helpful phrase, “I’m sorry”. Before looking at how you say it in Korean, let’s analyze how we use it in English. In English, “I’m sorry” has a very weird spot in our culture. We use it for a lot of things, such as apologizing for something or even to show your condolences when someone has had something bad happen to them. This is not the same in Korean. In Korean, you ONLY use “I’m sorry” when you are apologizing for doing something wrong. If you try to use it to show your condolences then Koreans will get confused and wonder why you are apologizing to them and what you had to do with the initial incident.

“I’m sorry” in Korean is:

죄송합니다 – joe-song-hap-ni-da

Wait a second… This looks very familiar to another Korean word we have gone over. Do you know which one? — Yep! 감사합니다. In fact, the last three syllables are identical! That is because 합니다 means “I do”. So literally, 감사합니다 is “I do appreciation” and 죄송합니다 is “I do apology”. Well, roughly ^_^

Now, again, it is extremely important to know that you can only use 죄송합니다 whenever you are apologizing for something you did. THAT IS IT! Unless you want to confuse all of the Koreans that you know.. Or anger them, I wouldn’t be able to tell you! ^_^;

Tags: korean, phrases, sorry, talk to me in korean, ttmik