Learn all about Korean culture while you learn the language! The two go together hand in hand; culture influences language and vice versa so it’s key to learn if you want to really understand Korean.
Past swear words some of the most fun things to learn is slang. You can easily connect with and impress Koreans with your knowledge past typical dictionary or textbook-level Korean. So let’s get into some Korean slang. I’ll try to break it down by its meaning/origin and whatever else might be interesting about the word/phrase and see if there is an English equivalent!
Today is 한글날 or Hangul Day, which is a Korean holiday dedicated to celebrating the Korean writing system and its creator King Sejong! So to commemorate, I’ll go through a bit on Hangul’s history, King Sejong, and some resources on how to learn Hangul yourself.
If you’ve been following recent Korean cultural trends you may have heard of Korean MBTI being adapted and gaining huge traction. While the trend of MBTI seems to have died down here, it is going strong in South Korea with many people making judgment calls on people based on their type.
A while back I introduced some common Korean idioms; phrases like “find a needle in a haystack” or “rags to riches”. This time I’m going more into some general Korean metaphors! A few of these will be combinations of different words to create their own meaning, others will have both literal and metaphorical meaning, and some are similar to metaphors in English so let’s get into it.
I mentioned it in passing in my Summer vocab post but camping in Korea has really picked up in popularity recently. I thought it would be interesting to get into it since camping in Korea is a bit different than in Canada or the USA like I am used to.
Korean karaoke, or noraebang (노래방) is a huge part of Korean culture and has expanded out to other countries around the world! You’ll find 노래방 in all kinds of situations in Korea. People go to it with friends or classmates, during work events with their teams, and there has even been an increase in people going alone as well.
I’m back again with more webtoon onomatopoeia! Onomatopoeia is found not only in webtoons but also used a lot in Korean reality TV shows. You can also find them in Kakao emoticons/stickers or other texting platforms. But today I’ll be delving deeper into different sounds and Korean sfx, with a focus on genre.
Superstitions are a really unique part of a culture. They can be tied to history, folklore, mythology, or just wordplay! If you’re going to/living in Korea or just meeting Korean friends learning about Korean superstitions can help you avoid making awkward mistakes or offending people. Also, it helps you connect with people more and integrate yourself into the community. So here are some popular Korean superstitions from the lucky, unlucky and strange/funny!
Want to test your Korean speaking abilities? or just learn something to show off and impress people a bit? Saying a Korean tongue twister is a fun way to test out your Korean and take it lightheartedly because even native speakers mess up with these so it’s okay if you misspeak or stumble through it a bit!
Kim is everywhere as a surname in Korea, Koreans named Kim make up millions of the population! It’s almost guaranteed that you have come across this name enough to wonder “Why are so many Koreans named Kim?”.