Advanced Korean study materials will delve deeper into Korean culture and specific uses that you probably don’t need to know in everyday situations. Show off your Korean!
Back in 2023, I did an overview of the Korean Lunar New Year, going through how it is celebrated, key New Year dishes, the difference between Chinese and Korean New Year, and more. Today I want to delve a bit deeper and get more into the customs and zodiacs, and certain things. Koreans still enjoy the January 1st New Year, but it’s more similar to the one over here, without any big family connection.
Today I want to get into Korean dialects! South Korea while being small in size, is quite big in population and history of culture to build their own dialectal variences. I’ll cover the major dialects, where they are from, any notes about them, the pronunciation differences, and then some interesting slang or expressions!
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!
Sometimes it’s hard not to feel stuck in a rut, especially if you are self-studying and don’t have a clear lesson plan to follow. Or maybe you feel tired of what you are currently doing. Trying out new methods to learn Korean is a good idea to revitalize your motivation! You can decide to pair a new technique alongside what you have already or swap entirely if it works for you.
不 means “not” and is very much like not, non-, un-, dis-, etc. in English! It generally appears in Korean as 불 or 부 at the front of a word. With that said Let’s get into some negative Hanja words! I’ll start out by breaking some of the words down, so you get the 2-for-1 combo~
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.
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.
You may have noticed 문 come up often when learning about writing or culture in Korean. From 문화 meaning to 문학 they are tied to a hanja of course! The hanja 文 means culture and literature/writing so you will see it in a lot of literature vocab in Korean.
Using habit pairing to learn Korean is a good way to integrate study in with your daily life and keep it up! I know some days you can’t sit down for a full study session and that’s okay. Even small, quick habits can make sure you maintain your Korean and still learn.