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Konglish comes from Korean + English and is the term used to refer to Korean loanwords from English. But there are more words in Korean grabbed from than just English! The biggest would be Chinese which is the origin of Sino-Korean words and numbers, which you can learn more about in my Sino-Korean introductory post.

Today we’ll get into loanwords from other countries. I would argue that Chinese influence is similar to Latin’s influence on English, and we don’t consider those to be loanwords (plus there is way too much to list out in one post) so I’ll skip all that but if you’d like to learn those you can check out the Sino-Korean category too.

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Summer is in full swing here with many days reaching over 30+ Celsius (86 °F) so let’s get into some Korean summer vocab! I’ll also cover some popular activities during the summer that people enjoy and related vocabulary.

What is Summer Like in Korea?

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‘What’ is always a keyword in a language, and important to growing your vocab and skills but there are actually multiple ways to say ‘What’ in Korean! Which one you use depends on the information and the words’ location in a sentence. Don’t worry though, I’ll run through all this simply and give examples to help you master what you need to know.

1. 무엇/뭐

뭐 and 무엇 are probably the ‘What’ you’ll hear the most when starting to learn Korean. But 뭐 is a shortened version and casual form of 무엇. 무엇/뭐 can be used when the subject is unidentified, and should not be used in front of nouns. So for example you cant say “뭐 노래”.

Examples of 무엇/뭐:

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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.

Here I’ll cover it all, from what makes Korean karaoke different to what to sing there, so let’s get into it~

What is the Difference between Korean Karaoke and American Karaoke?

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I’m back with more webtoon onomatopoeia again by request! Onomatopoeia is found not only in webtoons but also used a lot in Korean reality TV shows like Running Man, I Live Alone, Knowing Bros, etc. You can also find them in Kakao emoticons/stickers or other texting platforms. But today I’ll be delving deeper into different sounds and Korean sfx, with a focus on genre.

Note that a lot can overlap, but to avoid repeating myself I just kept certain ones to certain genres. So just because something isn’t in the action section doesn’t mean it won’t come up in an action webtoon! Anyway, let’s get into it~

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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.

Literature/Writing terms using 文 Hanja:

The majority of the words I could find using the Hanja are more related to literature; writing terms and styles than cultural words, which I found interesting! From types or genres like poems, thesis’, prose, and documents in literature down to sentences and characters.

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