우리 공부합시다
Let's study!

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.

^{Art by pikisuperstar / Freepik, Design by koreanling}

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가족 Korean Family Tree Terms

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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!

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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!

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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.

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A lot of Korean texting slang has a rooted meaning in the original word, just shortened to make it easier to type. Some originate from Korean itself like 엉 which is the most casual way to say yes or yeah in Korean, being reduced down to just ㅇㅇ. Or ᄋᄃ from 어디 (where), ᄆᄎ from 미쳤어 (crazy), etc. By using the most prominent elements of the word to make up the shortened texting version. While others like ㅇㅋ are based on the English okay and ㅂㅂ for bye bye.

Some Korean texting slang is not based around any word though, and more what they visually look like; such as ㅠㅠ which is closed eyes crying, or ;; which looks like little sweat droplets.

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