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Happy Korean Liberation Day! (also my birthday)

Korean Liberation Day on August 15th marks the anniversary of South Korea’s independence from Japanese rule on August 15, 1945, just 78 years ago as of 2023. This is also a key date because it’s one of the few holidays that both the North and South share in common.

Now this day is tied to WW2 and very heavy so I will get into the history a bit but not fully in-depth, for more please research yourself. But I want to touch on this day, especially since this is still recent history and there are Koreans who experienced Japanese rule or lived with the direct aftereffects that are still alive today.

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Let’s get into a quick & easy Sino-Korean lesson! 年 (년) is the Chinese and Sino-Korean character used to say year in Korean. It is used for year vocab and also vocab related to age and generations.

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Here’s some vocabulary that could be useful and fun for a lot of K-pop and even K-drama fans; Kpop Slang! One great way to learn the language is to integrate and use it more on a daily basis; so if you are an active fan of K-pop you can use this slang to talk with and understand Korean fans of your favs!

I’ll sort these out with the English equivalent and a little description of what the term means for people new to the slang terms or K-pop fan culture in general.

Image by watta_8 on Wallpapers.com

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Wanted to bring in more grammar posts and I think one of the best things starting out is learning some beginner Korean conjunction! Learning conjunctions like how to say ‘and’ in Korean is the easiest way to take your sentences and make them more natural and flow better!

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Let’s get into some grammar today for beginners and learn about 받침 or batchim rules! Batchim affects how you pronounce a lot of words and sentences so it is a key thing to learn early on.

받침 Batchim Meaning

받침 is a grammatical feature focused on pronunciation. The word 받침 means to support or prop; and is the bottom character in a Korean syllable (like 받: ㄷ 침: ㅁ).

The word itself is an example of its grammar rule! Each letter romanized comes out to equal badchim but it is actually pronounced more like batchim and so more often you’ll see it romanized as batchim rather than badchim.

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As of just this week South Koreans are now a year or two younger! Now this isn’t literal, if you and your Korean friend were both born in 2000 they are not suddenly younger than you. For the longest time Koreans had a separate age system that added a year to a person’s age. Well not anymore!

For a while now many Koreans and politicians have wanted to put an end to the Korean age system. The president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has said before the current age system has been a drain on resources. And a recent 2022 survey suggested “86% of South Koreans said they would adopt the international system”. So better late than never the change starts now!

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