Korean study blog for my help and yours. Korean grammar and vocabulary posts as well as interesting cultural knowledge!
Happy pride month! A while ago I mentioned briefly how gay Koreans would use certain terms to refer to a partner/romantic interest and I want to delve deeper into the culture! Both with some points on Korean LGBTQIA+ culture and life, and some great vocab!
If you’ve learned some words associated with school or education like 학교 you might have noticed the reoccurring 교 theme, that’s because a lot of school and educational words use Sino-Korean!
This one will be a 2-for-1 deal – there are two different Hanja that are pronounced 교 and both used for educational terms:
校: more specific to the school and environment
敎: related to the education process
I wanted to do a quick post about this while chatting with my boyfriend about AI. We wanted to test and see how well it could translate something so I specifically put the sentence “I’m going to my house to see my brother” into ChatGPT (free ver3, not the latest paid ver4). Not a complex sentence, but it tests 2 things about Korean, and it gave me:
“나는 내 집에 가서 내 동생을 보러 갑니다.”
Which is wrong and awkward. ‘Brother’ is really just a trick though, 동생 doesn’t work if you’re speaking about an older brother, 형 if you’re not male, etc. But the real test was ‘my house’ in a 1 to 1 translation 내 and 집 would mean my house. But for a lot of things Koreans don’t say 내 they say 우리.
One great tip for practicing and learning Korean on your own is using your phone AI like Siri to practice Korean! Virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa can speak Korean, and respond to jokes and questions. With AI assistants for modern phones, you can switch it to accept Korean (or even be bilingual and accept English and Korean) and practice some commands or fun questions and answers.
It can be a nice listening and speaking practice whenever you like or if you feel less confident in your pronunciation right now. Before you jump to language exchange partners you can test out how Siri hears you and build more confidence!
Round two of Korean drinking culture! In the first post I got into all the hierarchy, rules, and culture in different areas. Now let’s get into the more fun and relaxed part with all the Korean drinking games, slang, and more.
Drinking is a big part of adult life in Korea, and comes with some very interesting rules, games, tricks, and tips to surviving the Korean adult world.
Korean drinking culture really takes off in university where many clubs, groups, and majors will have special events centered around drinking with your peers. Then it continues into working life with bosses/managers and other higher ups pressuring teams to drink a lot or go for multiple rounds.
