Learning Korean... How to study korean, how to improve your Korean

For many people, learning Korean is an uphill struggle. Like climbing an endless, endlessly steep slope with no end. You have to take things in your stride, be realistic about where you want to reach and where you are in realtion to your final goal.

The most important thing is ATTITUDE. Never ever go into class, a conversation or a newspaper article thinking "I can't do this" "this is too difficult". Unfortunately Koreans have this attitude to language learning and it easily rubs off on you. Brush it off! But you also have to be realistic - focus on what you know and then if you learn something new, be proud of yourself. That is learning! If you don't know something, forget it. What you know is more much more important.

Once you have the right ATTITUDE, you need the right TOOLS. These will change and develop, as you improve. When you are a beginner, what you need is a phrasebook, a dictionary and a kids book.

Use the kids book to practise the alphabet and keep you entertained with pretty pictures. It will naturally teach you some words while you practise, although these may well be animals. Just remember, in the long run, everything, and I mean everything helps.
Use the phrasebook to learn practical words, expressions and phrases without getting confused by boring and irrelevant grammatical explanations. This will help you start talking immediately. Don't worry if you don't undersand anyone though. Focus on understanding individual words that you already know.
Use the dictionary whenever you can. An electronic one will help. If you see a sign, look up the words. If you hear a word often, try and guess how to spell it, and look it up. Use it to check words you have forgotten, BUT never, ever, ever look up a word in English and translate it into Korean. This is a terrible, terrible idea because no one will understand you and you will be confused and lose confidence. Trust me.

The kids book is for kindergarten children and literally teaches you how to write. Simple and great. The "teach yourself Korean" is a great book with dialogues and phrases and even simple grammatical explanations. It's only disadvantage and this is a big one, is that everything is transliterated into English letters. Ie, no Korean characters. And finally I still use the phone as a dictionary today. The dictionary is extremely in depth.

맞다 - get hit/struck/pricked

One of the biggest failures of the course that I am taking is that they abjectly refuse to teach any patterns. Every single word is seen as different and therefore, even though it's THE SAME word, they make you believe it has only one specific meaning and one specific use.
This is because Koreans hate it when anyone makes a mistake. When you start to learn a pattern, you are bound to make mistakes, so better not teach a pattern. This IMPEDES the language learning process. You learn by MAKING mistakes. You learn by speaking and creating. This method of teaching WITHHOLDS the tools which enable you to create and therefore speak.

rant over

The verb 맞다mat-da does actually have many distinct meanings, but one group is definitely the same. In many cases it means "get hit/struck/pricked". So here are some useful expressions all with 맞다mat-da meaning the SAME thing.

• 주사(를) 맞다ju-sa(reul) mat-da -> get an injection
• 비(를) 맞다bi(reul) mat-da -> get caught in the rain (ie get rained on)
• 총(을) 맞다chong(eul) mat-da -> get shot (by a gun)
• 바람(을) 맞다pa-ram(eul) mat-da -> get blown on by the wind
• 벼락(을) 맞다byeo-rak(eul) mat-da -> get struck by lightning
• 머리(를) 맞다meo-ri(reul) mat-da -> bang your head (against something)

notice how the thing that hits you is the object, so in a way 맞다mat-da can be very generally translated as "get"

rant continues

They only taught me 주사(를) 맞다ju-sa(reul) mat-da so that was the only one I could say. Three months later, I suddenly realise "ohhhh it's not just for injections" if they had taught me this 3 months ago, I could have said all these three months ago. No wonder no one ever learns anything in class.

Korean Basics: I like xxx /-ing / to... 좋아 해요

Expressing you like something in Korean is relatively straight forward. You just say the thing you like and then put the the verb 좋아 해요jo-a-heyo at the end. You can also attach an optional 을/를 the noun.

• I like kimchi -> 김치(를) 좋아해요kimchi(reul) jo-a-heyo
• I like beer -> 맥주(를) 좋아해요mekju(reul) jo-a-heyo
• I like football -> 축구(를) 좋아해요chuk-gu(reul) jo-a-heyo.

But what if you want to say you like "doing" something. Basically when you want to use a verb instead of the noun. That's pretty easy. You take the verb stem and drop the -다-da: 먹다 -> 먹-meogda->meog- and then add 는 것(을)-neun got(seul). So it becomes 먹는 것(을)meog-neun got(seul)

• I like eating kimchi -> 김치 먹는 것(을) 좋아해요kimchi meogneun got(seul) jo-a-heyo
• I like drinking beer -> 맥주 마시는 것(을) 좋아해요mekju mashineun geot (-eul) jo-a-heyo
• I like playing football -> 축구 하는 것(을) 좋아해요chuk-gu ha-neun got(seul) jo-a-heyo.

The reasons Why Korean has so many words 4: Social Reasons Again

Last time I discussed how Korean society used to be caste dominated and how each caste had their own "language" which became part of modern Korean with the arrival of democracy. But even with democracy, Korean society and language continued to be layered.

That's right, it's still layered by age. So you still need all the polite and respectful duplicate words to talk to older people. And older people need to use all the duplicate words to talk down to younger people. Not to mention all the words they use to talk amongst themselves!

Old people, who do not have so much contact with popular culture, use old words for things which young people would use English words for nowadays. Young and old people alike will use special words and phrases, on purpose, in order to show their age and status. And this is another reason why Korean has so many words.

If you want to talk to older or more important people than you, here are the most common polite forms (honorific or humilific) of normal words:

• 자다ja-da / sleep - > 주무시다ju-mu-shida / honorific of sleep
• 있다itt-da / there is, stay, be -> 계시다gye-shida / honorific of there is, stay, be
• 아프다a-peu-da / it hurts -> 편찮으시다pyeon-chan-eu-shi-da / honorific of it hurts
• 죽다juk-da / to die -> 돌아가시다do-ra-ga-shi-da / honorific of to die
• 주다juda / give -> 드리다deu-ri-da / humilific of give
• 데리다dae-ri-da / give someone a lift -> 모시다mo-shi-da / humilific of give someone a lift
• 만나다man-na-da / meet -> 뵙다bwep-da / humilific of meet
• 밥bap / rice -> 진지jin-ji / honorific of rice
• 집jip / house -> 댁dek / honorific of house
• 이름i-reum / name -> 성함seong-ham / honorific of name
• 나이na-i / age -> 연세yeon-sae / honorific of age
• 안내an-ne / wife -> 부인bu-in / honorific of wife
• 말mal / word -> 말씀mal-sseum / honorific of word
• 사람/명saram/myeong / person -> 분bun / honorific of person

The reasons Why Korean has so many words 3: Social Reasons

Last time I discussed how many, many Korean words come from other cultures. However, many many Korean words are also a product of Korean culture and social history too.

Much like India, Korea had a caste system. As a cultural-Brit, I always assumed a caste-system was much like a class-system. Basically, top, middle bottom. What a European way of thinking! Caste-systems are far more complicated than this. You have upper and lower and middle castes, but each caste is more of a represtantion of your specific role in society, not a designation of wealth.
Your job or rather your father's job decided your caste. Basically manual labourers were in the bottom layers of society, but each different job was considered higher or lower than the next. People never intermarried even at those levels. It wasn't just princesses and paupers who couldn't see each other. It was carpenters and masons who couldn't get married. These strict, clear distinctions created a very distinctly layered society.

This solid layering created a society where the only caste mixing took place when trading or doing business. Each caste would have spoken their own language to same-caste-members. There wasn't just "one Korean". But, there wasn't simply a "common language" either. When communicating with higher or lower caste members, people used language specifically designed to talk up or down to people. Just look at all the different speech levels in use today.

So historically, the Korean language had many different branches spoken by many different people. When Korea became a democracy in the 1990s, the caste-layers were blended into one new society. As social barriers broke down, suddenly, all the language and words which were only used by one caste became part of a much larger language which is modern Korean today, growing and multiplying the number of words.

Footnote 1: I am talking about official Korean here, the Korean which is taught to foreigners. There are still many different kinds of Korean.

Footnote 2: Just because the caste system was abolished by no means does this mean the wealth was redistrubted. Generally 양반yang-ban / the top or warrior and scholar caste still have all the money, they just don't wear the hats any more!

The reasons Why Korean has so many words 2: English & 한자 (hanja) the hidden terror behind Korean words

Last time we saw that the very nature of Korean is to have many words because Korean doesn't really use patterns to create meaning. As a result of this, Korean is extremely open to new words from other languages.

Anyone who is familiar with Korea has been baffled, amused, concerned and surprised by the huge amount of English words that have come to Korean and are in every day use. With America as the only superpower and political antithesis to China, Koreans have embraced many aspects of their culture and language.

But long ago, when the world was a different place, Koreans were doing the same thingno surprise here with language. Back then China was the political and cultural centre of Asia. So naturally Korean is full of Chinese too (I've heard about 50% of the words). Before Korean had an alphabet and even after Korean had an alphabet, everything was written in Chinese characters. In a similar way like Latin influencing European languages Chinese did the same thing.

Originally these words came to the language through scholars, traders and politicians (the educated and therefore high classes). So more often than not there is a "pure" Korean equivalent to a word of Chinese origin, which the lower classes would have in common use, resulting in two words with the same meaning.

Even nowadays suffering Korean children are made to memorise countless Chinese characters which form the backbone of so many words. But there is a logic to this, much like English becomes Koreanised So have these characters and Koreans use them as building blocks for making new words which have no Chinese equivalent.

Korean needs words to create meaning. So by absorbing and adapting foreign words they can satisfy that need, often resulting often in duplicate and triplicate synonyms.

Tomorrow one more reason why Korean has so many words!

The reasons Why Korean has so many words 1

As a student of Korean you can go pretty crazy with the sheer number of synonyms a word can have, and you should learn them all! I first came across this when I started learning family members. For example there are more than three words for wife: 부인, 아내, 집사람bu-in, an-e, jip-sa-ram or child: 자식, 아이(애), 어린이ja-shik, a-i(e), eo-ri-ni. And these are just ones I've heard in conversation or come across in class!

It doesn't stop with nouns or even people, sometimes it seems like there are at least three words for everything in Korean. And by three words, I mean three words that are used every day. Know any other words for children in English? How about progeny or offspring? These are words used in horror films or dusty tomes. (look! another word for book!).

So why is that there are so many more words in use in Korean?

The underlying reason for this is the nature of Korean. Korean words do not change according to their role in the sentence.
In fact the only words which change at all are verbs, and they only change a little. Compare that to English with over 100 irregular verbs. And then bear in mind there are also irregular nouns in English - what's the plural of man, woman, child, person? Or how about adjectives? big - bigger, good - better. This does not happen at all in Korean.

However the point that I am making is not that there are exceptions in English. The point is that there are patterns in English. Korean has very few patterns. So instead of meaning coming from patterns, meaning comes from words and particles

자식ja-shik means something more like "my child(ren)" so you wouldn't use it for some children you saw on the street. In English we just attach "my" to show this relationship or "some" to show that there is no relatiosnhip. Words like "my" "some" or "any" can be attached to any noun and always mean the same thing. ie They follow a pattern. Korean doesn't have this pattern, so in every case of "my" you need a new word.

On the other hand 어린이eo-ri-ni is more of an official word for child. So you see childcare centres called "어린이 집"eo-ri-ni jip / children's house or "children's" tickets as opposed to "adults". So often 어린이eo-ri-ni has a plural sense to it. In English we would just change child to children.

So where English uses an established pattern to change the meaning of a word, Korean instead uses a specific word for each different situation. And that's one reason why Korean has so many words!

In the next post. More reasons why Korean has so many words.

The difference between 못 and 안- 2

In the last post about 못mot / not and 안-an- / not we looked at using it when you talk about yourself. It's important to note that when talking about other things 안-an- / not is used much more commonly.

• 비 안와요bi an-wayo / it's not raining
• 영국 날씨가 안좋아요Yeonguk Nal-shi-ga anjo-ayo / English weather is not good
• 수업 아직도 안마쳤어요su-ob ajik-do an-ma-cheoss-eo-yo / class hasn't finished yet

안-an- / not is used in the case of other things and often people because you the reasons for it not happening are not external. You can't really explain why it isn't raining, or why the English weather is bad, and there is no particular reason whey class isn't finished yet.
Obviously when talking about other people, you often don't know their inner motivations and reasoning, so 안-an- / not is more appropriate. However if you do know and what explain that someone is late for reasons beyond their control, it's just as applicable to say 안-an- / not.

• 민수 안왔어요minsu an-wass-eo-yo / Minsu didn't come You don't know why he isn't here, because you don't know the circumstances
• 민수 못 왔어요minsu mot wass-eo-yo / Minsu didn't come You know the circumstances and why he didn't come. In some cases you could translate this as "Minsu couldn't come"