Evita's Korean and Other Languages

[Evita]

The TTMIK Iyagis are great for deconstructing, which I used big time back in the day, as well as this site http://www.korean.arts.ubc.ca/main.htm

The 410 course has an online textbook with tons of short stories, the translations, vocab list and and grammar lists. I don't get to share this too often because most Korean learners I meet are still beginner-low intermediate, but I think you might find it useful.

That looks like great material for advanced learners but I'm not there yet. Maybe in a year or two...

Another great resource for Korean is GLOSS. https://gloss.dliflc.edu/ My friends and I are convinced it has some of the most thorough teaching with the widest breadth out there for Korean, using all native materials. I can still learn things from a 1+ lesson, and 2+s can be tough. 3 is still almost uncharted waters >.<

I've done a couple of Gloss lessons but I didn't like them much. I took a beginner one and it explained the topic particles using a newspaper article about figure skating. I don't see the point in that. Maybe someday I'll come to like GLOSS but that day hasn't come yet.

If you have any questions about Korean, feel free to ask, I'm happy to help

Ohhhh, thanks for the offer, maybe I will. I have a question but I'm not sure you'll be able to answer it. The question is this: Why do Koreans like to say "Say hello (인사해)" when they introduce you to someone? I've noticed it both in dramas and in textbooks, and it sounded quite offensive to me at first. I mean, they are grown people, not children who need to be taught manners. Surely they already know they should say hello when they're being introduced to someone. So why do they say it anyway?

On a different topic, I forgot to mention how I was surprised in Korea to see so many pharmacies. I was standing at a bus stop in Gyeongju and could see at least three of them with several more being nearby. Now I regret that I never went into one. Do Koreans get sick that often?

[Bylan]

Ohhhh, thanks for the offer, maybe I will. I have a question but I'm not sure you'll be able to answer it. The question is this: Why do Koreans like to say "Say hello (인사해)" when they introduce you to someone? I've noticed it both in dramas and in textbooks, and it sounded quite offensive to me at first. I mean, they are grown people, not children who need to be taught manners. Surely they already know they should say hello when they're being introduced to someone. So why do they say it anyway?

On a different topic, I forgot to mention how I was surprised in Korea to see so many pharmacies. I was standing at a bus stop in Gyeongju and could see at least three of them with several more being nearby. Now I regret that I never went into one. Do Koreans get sick that often?

To answer your first question, the simple answer is it's a cultural thing. I'm 26 years old, anywhere in this world considered a mostly-adult, and my boss who is maybe just 15 years older than me, might introduce me to someone and casually say "인사해 Bylan", which is the equivalent of "Here, introduce yourself". Between friends, it can happen as well. It will typically be an older adult instructing a younger person, whether they're a kid or an adult, friend or coworker, to greet this other person.

If I sat down and thought about it (as I'm doing now hah) I would say Koreans have a strong desire to take care of others. That's why ajumma's will always ask you "밥 먹었어?" - if you haven't, you can certainly expect them to make you some food. It goes back to the Japanese annexation of the peninsula, when the Korean identity was in jeopardy, and afterwards in a post-Korean War period of crushing poverty. Older Koreans remember the hard, hard times when even something like food wasn't a certainty.

With all this in mind, modern situations with Koreans can seem downright strange. Going further, Koreans like to give the feeling that you are taken care of. The person who is being introduced to would appreciate it if the middleman would urge the other person to greet and introduce themselves. Rather than being offensive, it is very much the opposite - it's a show of respect and honor to the other person. If you are on the receiving end of a "인사해", there's a sense that the person saying it believes this other person deserves great respect and, you could even take it a step further, that they think highly enough of you that they are urging you to introduce yourself (or at least give an 안녕하세요) to this respected person. Does that make sense?

Another simple answer is that Koreans in general, and especially older adults, can be what we in the West would consider "naggy". The younger Koreans feel it too. Outside of a friendship you might not hear this word used, but 잔소리 is this - your parents telling you to do your homework, your grandma asking again when you're going to get married, how about kids, when are you going to start going to church again, etc etc. It's usually done out of love, and sometimes it can come across as a very strange, almost skewed version of love, in the more extreme cases.



For your second question, going back to that post-Korean war period, food and medicine were not of high quality, if they were even around at all. So Koreans can be very... hmm... medicinally-inclined? They're health care system is on the whole very good, and Koreans do care about their health. I was going to say health-conscious, but knowing many soju bottles and cigarettes a table of Korean men can go through in one night made me change my mind

In Gyeongju, that's a bit of a surprise, and there is possibly a large senior population around there, with it being an historical site, but in Seoul and its suburbs for instance, you have tons of people living close quarters (40 story high buildings, all clumped together stretching for a few miles), and so there is a demand for a number of pharmacies in one area. Big time chains are catching on for sure, but the mom and pop shops, or at least the appearance of a small time mom and pop shop is something many Koreans are most comfortable with.

I don't think they get sick any more often than Westerners do. But the amount of stress you can experience living in Seoul, working for a chaebol and ealing with the transit system, could definitely weaken your immunity system for sure :/

[Stassri]

인사해: I agree with Bylan that it's a cultural thing. it's like telling someone you invited over to your place to help him/herself at the dinner table. Absolutely no offence is meant.

밥 먹었어:I dont' know, this is my first time hearing such an opinion as yours, Bylan. '밥 먹었어?', it doesn't mean anything, really. You couldn't care less about the person you say that to when you say it. (if (s)he actually had a meal or not) it's one of those set pharses without any meaning. A similar example is '학교 잘 다니고 있어?' (as if someone would usually drop out of school. Offending, huh?)

As for pharmacies, I'm afraid I'm unable to answer this, because I don't know the situations other countries are in. But FYI, there is a buliding in which there are a half-dozen doctors' offices and 3 drugstores around my neighborhood (in Seoul). Sometimes they tend to be close to each other. For it's profitable.

[Serpent]

Just noticed the mention of GLOSS. well, to me that's exactly the fun of it I'm tired of the standard texts about tourists, businessmen and exchange students. I don't tend to think of that as using native materials to explain grammar, rather the opposite. For many learners it's a good introduction to native materials (or specific kinds of them), and they use grammar, glossaries and whatnot to help you understand the text. The grammar section can totally be skimmed briefly or skipped altogether if you already know it
To me it sounds like you could benefit from the higher-level lessons. Oh and I hope you actually like figure skating

As for asking whether you've eaten, apparently Chinese do it too (or used to, at least).

[Sizen]

So I'll just add in some cultural parallels between other Asian countries that might help clear things up.

Now it might not actually be the same thing, but in Japan, I feel like people say "aisatsu shite" or just "jikoshoukai", the equivalent of "인사해", more than I would ever feel comfortable saying in English. I would have to agree that in this case it's more than likely a cultural thing and not at all something that should be taken as an insult. Where this need to tell people to introduce themselves comes from, however, I don't know.

As for 밥 먹었어, I remember hearing a similar expression that meant "hello" in Taiwanese: "chia̍h pá bē?". Literally, "have you eaten?" The explanation I was given by my host family was similar to Bylan's. Back in the day, people were legitimately worried about whether or not their family and friends had managed to eat that day, so they would ask right away when they saw them. Over time it became the equivalent of "hello" and now it doesn't express any real concern anymore.

Obviously Japan and Taiwan aren't Korea, but I thought it was interesting that the cultures of these three countries overlapped a bit with each other in this case.

[Evita]

Hey, I'm back after a small break. Thanks everyone for stopping by and contributing to the culture discussion, it was some interesting reading.

Serpent, yes, thinking of GLOSS as native materials with notes and explanations is rather appropriate. I don't read native materials in Korean, though, maybe that's why I'm not keen on GLOSS. I prefer studying from textbooks and listening to native audio.

Speaking of textbooks, I've found a new series I like called 세종 한국어 (Sejong Korean). I'm always looking for books with the best accompanying audio for my sentence decks, and the ones I've used so far all have had some minor drawbacks. Let me list them:

- Korean Grammar in Use. I've finished mining sentences from the beginners' book but I haven't started on the intermediate one yet. I've looked through it a lot during the last year but that's it. The reason is that it is organized more like a reference book and sentences in the beginning chapters might use some grammar from the ending chapters, and that's not good for my deck. I need to introduce new grammar in an organized manner. Once that's done, then I can start mining sentences from this book.

- The Russian series. The structure of these books is very well suited for my purposes, there are 7-10 new grammar points introduced in each chapter, and each of them has a few sample sentences. What I don't like so much is that one of the speakers in the audio files is an old man who was a smoker or something, I don't like his voice and I wouldn't want to listen to him much on Anki. Also, these books are pretty boring.

- The Ewha series. These books are quite good (and pretty) and I will probably order level 3 when I'm closer to finishing level 2 but they are focused on students so many of the dialogues are about university life. Also, none of the texts that have audio has translations so I have to translate the sentences myself if I want to add them to Anki.

- The Seoul National University series. I recently started the second book. It's all just review for me so it's pretty boring, and there are only two audio dialogues per chapter. Not a lot of material to get sentences containing a specific grammar point from. But this series is very detailed and contains come constructions that are not covered elsewhere. For example, particles like 씩 or 끼리 or another one I don't remember right now that was attached to money quantities. Or how some constructions are used in a specific manner, like 서 그래요. That's reason enough to keep going with this book, and once I get to level 3, there will be more new stuff for me to learn. I'm currently on chapter 3 of 33.

So where do the Sejong books fit in all of this? First of all, these books are meant for adults, not students, so the content is more interesting for me. There are 8 levels in total, I think, and each level has 14 chapters, and each of them has two (sometimes three) grammar points. If I actually attended these classes I'd go for level 5, I think, but here I started with the level 3 book because I want to start with stuff I'm already comfortable with. Everything is in Korean, including grammar explanations, so I'm trying to read those and become familiar with how such things are expressed in Korean. I'm not worried that I might not understand something because I can always refer to the KGiU books. Anyway, each chapter has five audio dialogues, and I like them the best because they feel the most natural. I did three chapters last weekend and I plan to do more this week. It feels easy and fun.

I also added a new grammar point to Anki - 는 대로, using sentences from TTMIK. I kind of already knew it but adding it to Anki makes it "official" that I know it. It means "to do the second action the same way as the first action", but it also means "as soon as". I got curious about how it was different from -자마자 and here's what I found out from the internet. Often there's very little difference, but one site suggested that -자마자 is more immediate, like a matter of seconds, while -는 대로 is a matter of minutes. Another difference is that -는 대로 can be used only about future actions, not about past actions.

My plan to study more hanja hasn't worked out yet, I've only added two new characters since the last time I posted about it. Oh well. The bigger issue is that I still have around 750 Anki vocabulary cards to review. I'm working on it. Since I'm not adding any new cards, eventually the backlog should die down. That is, I am adding some new words that I encounter in my studies, but I'm not activating them. The thing about my vocabulary deck is that there are lots of words that don't want to stick because they have no context. That's one of the reasons I'm going through so many textbooks and reading everything that's there. For example, I added the word 치우다 to Anki a long time ago but always had trouble remembering it. Now I read it in a dialogue and I'm confident I won't have that trouble anymore.

By the way, my hanja deck already has two five-star ratings on Ankiweb even though it only has 270 cards. I'm glad people appreciate my quality work.

Ah, one last thing. I had pretty much stopped watching Korean dramas since summer, but last week I started a new one again called "Twenty again". The first couple of episodes were so-so but I'm in episode 7 right now and I'm enjoying watching it. I still use subtitles even though I can understand a lot without them.

[Serpent]

GLOSS also has lessons with native audio though, from the radio etc. There are transcripts and you're also expected to listen intensively to small segments

[Evita]

Yes, but I don't like listening to native material intensively, it's no fun. And let's stop talking about GLOSS now, I have plenty of other resources to occupy my time.

And speaking of those, I came across this bit of dialogue in the Sejong book yesterday:

가: 중국어로 발표하기가 어렵지요?
나: 네. 저에게는 아직 무리예요.

I had 무리하다 in my Anki as "to overexert oneself" but that didn't make sense in this context. I was stumped for a long time but in the end I checked the KOR-KOR dictionary and it seems to mean "unreasonable".

[Bylan]

I really like UBC's grammar dictionary, very thorough.

- 자(마자) as soon as http://www.koreangrammaticalforms.com/e ... 0000001739
- 는 대로 1 as it is / how things develop http://www.koreangrammaticalforms.com/e ... 0000000619
- 는 대로 2 as soon as http://www.koreangrammaticalforms.com/e ... 0000000620

As far as 무리 goes, that's one of those words that is almost best not to memorize has having a specific English meaning, but rather use the English translation as a guideline. 저에게는 무리예요 is kind of like "it's too much for me", in the sense that it's hard work and requires me to exert myself tremendously. It can also be used as unreasonable too, in certain circumstances, but I believe it's core meaning is for "work" that is "too much". At least that's been my experience with it. Keep up the great work!

[Evita]

I really like UBC's grammar dictionary, very thorough.

Really? I don't like it much. First, the grammar explanations are very short and usually insufficient. Second, the example sentences are from native materials and often contain difficult or obscure vocabulary, and sometimes are not even complete sentences. There are also no comparisons of similar grammar constructions.

I usually just google "korean grammar 는 대로" or whatever I need.