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.

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"

The difference between 못 and 안-

I wish someone had explained this to me at the beginning. Normally my teacher would just correct me every time without explanation when I used either 못mot / not or 안-an- / not. Someone had half explained that 못mot / not means something more like "can't/couldn't" but it didn't seem to fit. After all, you don't normally answer the question "did you see Phil" with "no, I couldn't see him." The answer would be "no, I didn't see him"

In Korean, however, you answer this question with 못mot / not, not 안-an- / not. The difference, in theory is pretty simple. In practice, for English speakers it's a little more difficult. We don't think about this circumstances of why something "isn't" nearly as much as Koreans. For us, something simply "is" or "isn't". But basically put:

• 못mot / not is used for when something didn't happen because of external factors
• 안-an- / not is used for something which didn't happen because of you, you didn't want to, or you didn't choose to

Imagine your teacher asked you: "Have you done your homework?" If you hadn't done it how would you answer? In English you just say "I didn't do it because...", but in Korean if you say: "숙제 안했어요sukje an-haesseoyo / I didn't do my homework" it means you didn't want to, and there is no real excuse. If you say "숙제 못 했어요sukje mot haesseoyo / I didn't do my homework" it means there is a reason that you didn't do it. So which one would you answer with?

Here are some other phrases where 못mot / not is more common than 안-an- / not:

• 비터 만났어요? / 아니요, 못 만났어요peter mannass-eo-yo? / aniyo, mot mannass-eo-yo / Did you meet Peter? No I didn't. - you couldn't meet him because you were sick
• 김치 많이 먹어요? / 아니요, 못 먹어요kim-chi mani mog-eo-yo? / aniyo, mot mog-eo-yo / do you eat a lot of kimchi? No I don't - you don't eat it because it's spicy
• 장학금 받았어요? / 아니요, 못 받았어요jang-hak-geum padass-eo-yo? / aniyo mot padass-eo-yo / did you get a scholarship? No I didn't. - you didn't get it because you grades weren't good enough

Two of those sentences would be strange if you used 안-an- / not. And one would be ok. Which ones?
That's right! If someone asks you: 김치 많이 먹어요?kim-chi mani mog-eo-yo? Do you eat a lot fo kimchi, you can answer 아니요, 안먹어요aniyo, am-mog-eo-yo / do you eat a lot of kimchi? No I don't. But that would mean that you don't eat it because it's spicy, you don't eat it because you choose not or don't want to.

So for the other two sentences, especially with number three, you can't really use 안-an- / not at all. Who doesn't want to get a scholarship? And why did you choose not to meet Peter? You don't like him?

I hope that's clear! Easy to understand, but a little complicated to put into practice. Now every time I hear 못mot / not or 안-an- / not Im going to be thinking about this, and then try to use it myself.

Consideration and Kindness

One of the best things about Korea is the kindness and helpfulness of the people here. People go out of their way to help a confused or lost foreigner. Being "considerate" is one of the most valued character traits in Korea. At dinner the reason everyone is so keen to pour you another glass or stock you up on whatever's been finished is because they want to show they are thinking about you.

But, they're not really thinking about you. They're thinking about a foreigner, or rather what they think a foreigner is, wants, likes and doesn't like. They even try to guess what you know and don't know. If you've been in Korea a while, you might have noticed that although they are extremely congenial and polite, sometimes they just don't answer a question. Especially if it's about something which they think you don't know or do.

In fact, Koreans spend so much time worrying about what you're thinking that they don't actually hear the words you're saying. A prime example of this was in one of my English classes with one of my best students (he improved amazingly in just 2 months). I told him "At the weekend we rented a car and drove to Namhaedo". Bear in mind this is a high level class... He pulled an extremely confused face, didn't say anything for a while and then "But taking a taxi there is very expensive". Before you all go and say "he didn't understand you..." Let me just point this out: "rent a car" in Korean is 렌트 카ren-tuh caa Furthermore I never mentioned a taxi which is also the same word in Korean. He simply could not believe that a foreigner could drive in Korea, let alone rent a car. He was being "considerate" and showed concern at what he assumed was something very irrational (but logical because Im a foreigner).

Another experience happened on a train, fair enough, my Korean is terrible and in all likelihood wrongly phrased. Also my question was in a way answered. I asked the conductor on a train "기차는 대구 역에 가요?"gi-cha-neun daegu-yeok-e ga-yo? / does the train go to daegu station? He proceded with a long list of all the stops between where we were and Seoul including what time the train got there. So fair enough, he did actually tell me that it was stopping at the station, but he didn't answer the question. So my response was "how weird!" What was a Korean friend's take on all of this? "how considerate!". He was covering all the angles and thinking about me, not actually listening to what I was saying, but rather trying to help what he saw as a lost foreigner.

I have had countless experiences like this, and it's only now that I've realised when Koreans take a long time to answer something, or give a strange answer, it's not about understanding. They are trying to fit an answer to you, not to your question. Korean culture (and in my experience, most culture except for the Anglo-Saxon/Northern European culture) is more about performing social function than giving information. Which explains why we Brits are sometimes taken aback by how respectful other cultures are, but it also explains why they talk so bloody-much!

Colours in Korean

As a young child exposed to the vulgarity of philosophy, I was posed the question is blue blue? Well of course it bloody is. I think the point was that everyone sees colours differently so blah blah blah. A lovely linguistic cliché is to discuss the fact that different languages cultures have different concepts of colour and don't have certain colours at all. I have not yet come across a language like this in my experience, so I can't comment (though someone told me that Latin colours were more about brightness.)

Anyway as you would guess, Korean has many words for colour and of course many different colours. A great similarity between English being the poetic '파루다'pareuda it is azure to "파랗다"parata it is blue. The former being used for only natural phenomena. Intriguingly, traffic lights, despite being the same here as in any country, are referred to as turning blue "파래 지다"parae jida and not green. As far as I've learnt there is no adjectival/verbal form for green! Philosophers please don't get too excited.

Furthermore it seems like the phrase "my hat is red" "내 모자가 빨간색이에요"nae mojaga bbalkanseki-ye-yo or "내 모자가 빨개요"nae mojaga bbalkayo mean exactly the same thing... Although I think it is more likely that their difference is the difference between "좋아요"jo-ayo / it is good and "좋아 해요"jo-a-heyo / I like it(it is good). One meaning something like "its nature is red" and the other "it is red". Anyway I don't really understand why Korean has so many verbal pairs like this, but the more I learn, the more (however slowly) I understand.

Slow Days

These past few days have been relatively slow. I am beginning to think that the Korean attitude to language is that it just as a set of unrelated phenomena that all have equal weight and value, and can only be learned individually. Don’t take my tone as critical or negative, it’s probably because I am sick!

The “grammar” points have basically been extensions of meaning in already learned forms. We have already studied the -지 않다-ji anta form which basically negates a verb, and we just recycled it as a question: 예쁘지 않아요?yeppeuji anayo? / she isn’t pretty? as opposed to 예쁘지 않아요yeppeuji anayo / she isn’t pretty. This seems to me to be totally logical and everyone has already been asking questions like this anyway, because it’s easier than inserting other question endings/particles.

Same with -는데-neunde, we recycled it again as -는데요neunde-yo. I shouldn’t complain because we got to practise this extremely flexible and useful ending which I still don’t understand fully. We just learned it as an ending to a sentence rather than as some kind of conjunction. Although I’m not sure what the difference is exactly, it probably is something like: “I don’t like strawberries though”. As opposed to “I don’t like strawberries, though I’m hungry.”

I suppose this kind of thoroughness helps students unfamiliar with grammatical forms and it might also help those who need the writing practice, but couldn’t we just learn something new instead… There’s so much I still have no clue about!