Korean study blog for my help and yours. Korean grammar and vocabulary posts as well as interesting cultural knowledge!
Sino-Korean basically means that a specific words source is originally Chinese. About 60% of Korean has Chinese origins as a basis. Words like 인간 (person/human) use the Chinese character (or hanja in Korean) 人 make the 인 in 인간.
Yes and no haha. It’s not vital to know the origins of a word from the Chinese character or recognize the hanja but it can be very useful. (more…)
One thing about Korean many people struggle with is the dynamics between people and speech. For native English speakers; especially if English if your only language, honorifics/formalities is something that doesn’t exist to a quarter of the extent as in Korean. Korean is a culture based highly around respect and knowing or understanding you position and others.
For beginners I would typically recommend just sticking with the polite 요 form as that is safe and pretty easy to understand but to truly speak with Koreans and integrate you need to understand the levels of Korean formalities and how, when, and where to use them.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Maybe your partner is Korean, maybe you want to use your partner and subject them to Korean and your study progress or maybe you’re looking to get in the Korean dating scene. These terms, phrases, and words are commonplace and related to romance in Korea, let’s get into it!
One important thing about the Korean dating and romance scene is along with words like boyfriend and girlfriend, people also commonly use terms for family. Many of you probably know this if you have been watching or listening to Korean media for a while but words like 오빠 (which means brother; and is used by a younger girl) can be used for friends, or even for your boyfriend!
But I’ll get into the Korean family terms a bit later so for now let’s focus on romance!
Okay, I feel like Hangul is something I need to make a post about. Even though I’m past the stage of learning it, it’s necessary for the language (of course) and also for following along on my blog! I know romanization is an option but Korean to English is nowhere near a 1 to 1 translation for pronunciation. With characters like ㅋ being romanized as G or K, or ㄹ being in-between an L and R it can get pretty confusing for people pretty quick. So let’s get into it and learn hangul!
I remember really having an issue with sino vs native korean numbers and this is a resource I found that can really help you out if you find yourself in the same position! You can play through 1-100 on both the sino and native korean numbers games for a nice review and test of your skills.
