Evita's Korean and Other Languages

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Evita
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Sun Dec 11, 2016 7:43 pm

I feel really foolish for not checking out the new podcast 조윤희의 볼륨을 높여요 sooner. It seems to be as good as the previous one. If you're a Korean learner and haven't checked it out yet, I recommend doing so. It can be helpful even to beginners as a way to get a feel for the language and get used to the different verb endings.

It's also a great way to practice number recognition. The host, Jo Yoon Hee, reads a lot of text messages sent in by listeners, and she identifies each author by the last four digits of the phone number, like this - 구육일이님 (9612). 님 is the honorific title that is also always added. So trying to recognize these numbers can be a good exercise. I've gotten better at this over time but number and date recognition still doesn't come automatically to me.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised that my listening skills still seem improved from 8 months ago. I can't say that I understand almost everything but I often understand more than half of what is said. It depends on the subject, though. But one thing I noticed is that my brain is ready for longer sentences, sometimes even anticipating what endings might come at the halfway and at the end. I think all the listening I have done with Anki definitely has helped.

Today I also found out the difference between 이해하다 and 알아듣다, both of which mean "to understand". Well, I already kind of knew it since I'd heard a lot of 이해하다 in dramas, but I didn't know much about 알아듣다. Here's the video:

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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Jiwon » Mon Dec 12, 2016 5:00 pm

Evita wrote:I have a question about Korean. I hope someone can answer me.

I was working with my Ewha textbook and saw this sentence:

산 지 이주일이 안 되셨으면 교환이 가능해요.

My question is about the honorific suffix. Why was it added to 되다 even though the subject is "two weeks", not a person? Is there a rule I should learn about when to add it? And also - is it possible to add the suffix to more than one verb in a sentence?


I saw this post days ago, but didn't have time to give you a proper answer.

One way to interpret this would be that there is a hidden "real" subject to the phrase, which would be "고객님" in this case.
(고객님께서) 산 지 이주일이 안되셨으면 교환이 가능해요.

But this doesn't make sense to me, because if 고객님 was indeed the hidden subject, I would use an honorific suffix for "산 지" as well and say "사신 지". Plus, if I wanted to be really precise, I ought to use different honorific levels for the buyer and the period since the purchase took place. So a "correct" sentence would run something like this:
(고객님께서) 사신 지 (or 구매하신 지 might be more appropriate in a formal setting) 이주일이 안됐으면 교환이 가능해요.

But since the 1990s, the Korean service sector gave rise to what could be called a hyper-honorific mode, where you would put honorific suffixes in every instance possible. We now have a pet peeve phenomenon of 사물존칭 (object honorific), in which people would be honorifics for objects just to appease the customers and appear polite. Some funny examples include:
"고객님, 아메리카노 두 잔 나오셨습니다." vs. "고객님, 아메리카노 두 잔 나왔습니다."
"여기 인터넷 속도가 엄청 빠르셔서 문제가 없으실 거에요." vs. "여기 인터넷 속도가 엄청 빨라서 문제 없을 거에요."

The problem is that some people don't realise there's anything wrong with this, and some of them may even scold the servers if they don't use this hyper-honorific mode. Hence, we now have a whole mix of inconsistent honorific levels sprinkled all over sentences used at shops, cafés, restaurants, and department stores (the major culprit of hyper-honorificism).
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Evita
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Mon Dec 12, 2016 6:51 pm

Thanks a lot for the explanation, Jiwon 씨. It was not at all what I expected, though. I thought there would be a complicated rule, but it turns out that the sentence is essentially wrong! These hyper-honorifics must really be used a lot if they get even put into textbooks. This is not the first time I was puzzled by this, now I will at least know the cause. I think I will try not to say sentences like that since I'm a big fan of using grammar correctly.
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby qeadz » Mon Dec 12, 2016 9:07 pm

Thanks Jiwon for that! Also thanks Evita for asking. Actually I encountered this too and was a little confused.
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Jiwon » Tue Dec 13, 2016 5:37 am

Evita wrote:Thanks a lot for the explanation, Jiwon 씨. It was not at all what I expected, though. I thought there would be a complicated rule, but it turns out that the sentence is essentially wrong! These hyper-honorifics must really be used a lot if they get even put into textbooks. This is not the first time I was puzzled by this, now I will at least know the cause. I think I will try not to say sentences like that since I'm a big fan of using grammar correctly.


The only problem is that it has already become a part of the contemporary Korean language, and nearly everyone creates such utterances now and then, myself included. In addition, some people may consider you impolite for not using hyper-honorifics.
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Evita
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Tue Dec 13, 2016 6:17 am

Jiwon wrote:
Evita wrote:Thanks a lot for the explanation, Jiwon 씨. It was not at all what I expected, though. I thought there would be a complicated rule, but it turns out that the sentence is essentially wrong! These hyper-honorifics must really be used a lot if they get even put into textbooks. This is not the first time I was puzzled by this, now I will at least know the cause. I think I will try not to say sentences like that since I'm a big fan of using grammar correctly.


The only problem is that it has already become a part of the contemporary Korean language, and nearly everyone creates such utterances now and then, myself included. In addition, some people may consider you impolite for not using hyper-honorifics.

I see. Then the only solution is to pay more attention to its usage and develop a good "instinct" for this.
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Evita
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Thu Dec 29, 2016 7:30 pm

I found an article today about the way Korean was written before hangeul. I had been wondering a lot about that. It's a great article but I wish it had more examples because I can't wrap my head around those systems properly. Maybe I'll read it again tomorrow and it will make more sense.

https://mujjingun.github.io/blog/How-wa ... n-written/
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Sat Dec 31, 2016 2:38 pm

It's the end of 2016 so I thought I should do a write-up.

This year was light on language studying. Partly because I didn't feel like it, and partly because I had some health concerns. I wasn't really ill but I had some strange on-going symptoms which turned out to be because I didn't consume enough liquids during the day. Basically I constantly drank too little. I've been trying to fix that but it's not something you can recover from in a week or even in a month.

Another thing that happened this year was that I had to change jobs. Finding a new job and then getting acquainted with everything and everyone there took a lot of energy.

So what was it that I did do? It was basically two activities - listening and working on my Anki decks. It didn't advance my Korean much but that's okay, my desire to teach is stronger than my desire to learn. I already described how I reordered the vocabulary deck so I won't repeat that. As for the sentence deck, I only added 58 new sentences to it during the whole year. But - I added 343 sentences to a second deck that I haven't published yet. It has 939 sentences in total now. The reason I'm not publishing it yet is because I need to order the sentences first, and I want to add some more before doing that. The crazy thing is that I'm not even studying this deck myself, I just add the sentences and the audio and that's that. It might seem like a colossal waste of time, but I'm sure it's going to be a great deck when it is ready.

As for textbooks, I think I started the year with Sejong 3 and then switched over to Ewha 2. My plan is to finish Ewha 2 by April and then go back to Sejong 3 and maybe Sejong 4. At some point I want to start Ewha 3, too. We'll see how it goes.

I don't want to set goals that are too high. Korean is my hobby so I will work on it when I feel like it. I do hope to accomplish more than I managed to this year.
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Sun Jan 15, 2017 10:06 am

I'm still working on chapter 9 of Ewha 2. It's one of the more interesting chapters - it's about special days. Here are some sentences:

- 돌잡이가 워예요?
- 그건 보통 실이나 돈, 쌀, 연필을 놓고 그 중에서 아기가 잡은 것을 보고 아기의 장래를 추측하는 거예요.

- What is doljabi?
- It's when you put a thread, money, rice, and a pencil in front of a child and guess his future based on which object he picks.

저는 돌잔치에 가 본 적이 없는데 기회가 되면 저도 가 보고 싶어요.
I've never been to a first birthday party before, but I'd like to attend one if I get the chance.

이번 주말에 야유회를 갈 때 뭘 입고 갈 거예요?
What do you plan to wear to the picnic this weekend?

예식장에서도 하지만 호텔이나 교회에서도 결혼식을 해요.
Some people have their wedding ceremony in a ceremony hall, some in a church or a hotel.

다음 주가 설날인데 무슨 계획 있어요?
Do you have any plans for the Lunar New Year next week?

그리고 부모님께 세배도 해요.
We also bow to our parents.

거기에 가면 송편도 만들어서 먹을 수 있고 한국의 전통 놀이도 직접 해 볼 수 있거든요.
You can make your own rice cakes and try your hand at traditional Korean games there.

~~~~~~~~~

I also found a new podcast directed at lower intermediate students that has a script available for each episode. It's called "반짝반짝 한국어". I worked through the first episode and it was pretty easy, there were only 4-5 words I didn't know. Then I listened to the second one and it was more difficult. I'll try to work through it next week.
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Evita
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Re: Evita's Korean and Other Languages

Postby Evita » Sat Jan 28, 2017 6:35 pm

So, four and a half years after I watched my first Korean drama, I've started watching my first variety show, Running Man, and I'm enjoying it a lot. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much. So why wait until now? I've known about the show's existence for years since Dramabeans are recapping it, but I wasn't inclined to watch it. I think it's because I knew very few celebrities that would appear on it, and also the amount of text on screen scared me. But now I've watched enough dramas to recognize some of the actors, and of course 송중기! I've been a fan of him since I saw 성균관 스캔들 and 착한남자. I recommend both of these dramas to anyone reading this log.

The videos of Running Man that I found have unremovable English subtitles so I'm reading them and also pausing sometimes to read the Korean text. There are still many words I don't know. Here are some I just added to Anki: 획득하다, 엉금엉금, 대인, 건반, 굴욕, 토하다, 탐색하다, 귀금속.
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