-뜨리다 make something fall / go down / break

As with 맞다 no one ever taught me that -뜨리다ddeu-ri-da can be put on the end of lots of words and generally has an overal meaning which is: to make something fall, go down, even explode or break. It doesn't appear in the dictionary on its's own.

Just note, that the word that precedes -뜨리다ddeu-ri-da must be put in it's 아/어/여 form (look at the examples below).

• 터지다teo-ji-da / explode->터뜨리다teo-ddeu-rida/make something explode, let off
• 떨어지다ddeo-reo-jida / fall down->떨어뜨리다ddeo-reo-ddeu-rida / make fall down/drop
• 무너지다mun-eo-jida / collapse->무너뜨리다mu-neo-ddeu-rida / make collapse
• 넘어지다neom-eo-jida / fall over->넘어뜨리다neom-eo-ddeu-rida / make fall over
• 늘어지다neu-reo-jida / hang down->늘어뜨리다neu-reo-ddeu-rida / make hang down

Here are some examples which I have got from 100% non-textbook authentic Koreans sources

• 젓가락 떨어뜨렸어요jeot-ka-rak ddeo-reo-ddeu-ryeoss-eo-yo->I dropped my chopsticks!
• 폭죽 터뜨리다pok-juk teo-ddeu-ri-da->Let off fireworks (bangers)
• 다리를 무너뜨린 범인...da-ri-reul mu-neo-ddeu-rin beom-in->The criminals who made the bridge collapse...

There are many other words with the ending -뜨리다ddeu-ri-da, but now you know the pattern, when you come across new words it'll be much easier!

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 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.

REPEAT!!!

Some days this is really how I feel they teach us, and this is how they the way we learn. The only way is to constantly, repetitively and ceaselessly chip away at the mind with example sentences. No context, no variety, no interest, and as long as you can write an example sentence, you "know" it.

This is a sketch I did while both my teachers failed extremely successfully at explaining a semantically complex ending. "Look the students don't understand! Lets give them 3 hours of explanation and then command them to make example sentences off the top of their heads. Then give more explanations and then make them create more example sentences. It doesn't work? Let's do the same thing tomorrow and again and again until they just say 'yes we understand' to make us stop."

Guess how many students actually tried making example sentences? 2 out of 14. So 2 out of 14 actually did something. The rest? Silence. And because there was no context it was just a mad guessing game anyway.

Some days I just want a refund

Day 2: At the doctors

Korean is a vocabulary heavy language and the lesson today was extremely vocabulary heavy. At the moment I am focusing most of my energy on learning new words and so far the effects have been odd. Using memorisation software I input about 15 words a day and then do various tasks until I am able to recall the words from English into Korean. I have found that more than this number actually means I forget the words.

However I use recall carefully. Generally with the rote learned words I am unable to use them in future conversations. Often I am able to recognise them in a text and sometimes in speech. In class, I do my best to artificially insert them into conversation, often at the expense of politeness or conversation, but I know that despite all this effort, the only real way to “know” a word is to use it, use it, use it.

Interestingly on the subject of health, the words repair and heal/recover are covered by the same verb 고치다gochida / to heal or repair. Much to my amusement, Koreans with their special breed of English refer to their health as “my condition” and evaluate it by percentage. Further confirmation that Koreans are in fact, friendly robots.