한국어 - WEEK 9 Korean 1 (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

The book I am using is 한국어1 which is the Korean for Foreigners course book of the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. The book has 35 chapters. Target end date is February 3, 2012.

MONDAY: Chapter Nineteen – 파티에 같이 가요

We can’t avoid this so it is better to talk about it now. How do you say dates in Korean? Since they use two systems, it could get very confusing in choosing which is which. For years, they use Sino Korean numbers and the counter 년 so that 1996 would be 천 구백 구십 육 년. You just plug the counter at the very end. As you can see, telling the year is like saying one thousand nine hundred ninety six instead of the common nineteen ninety six in English. You’ll get used to it. For months, you also use Sino Korean, just one to twelve this time, no biggie, and plug in the counter 월. If you have noticed, this is the first syllable of the word for Monday. Wonder why? Nah, that’s easy. Go figure it out yourself. There are two mutations: June is 유월 instead of 육월 and October is 시월 instead of 십월. If you listen closely, they are just avoiding some consonant clashes. For everything else, just mash up the Sino Korean number and the month counter. Week is 주 and since we don’t have special names for those, all you have to remember are: 지난주 (last week), 이번주 (this week), and 다음주 (next week). Those prefixes come in handy so you might want to memorize them now.

TUESDAY: Chapter Nineteen – 파티에 같이 가요

To say “before” or “after” a certain time period, you add 전에 and 후에 respectively as suffixes. You are, of course, familiar with ~에 as it is an all-around particle for location and time. It has a similar function here. So just try to remember the first syllables for each for those are the real clues. Before 9 o’clock is 9시전에 while after 9 o’clock is 9시후에. Just two particles to memorize so do it fast! This is very useful when talking about events in the past or planning for the future! You could also use those two after nouns, like after class would be 수업후에, for example!

WEDNESDAY: Chapter Twenty – 힌국어 공부가어때요?

What if you have to say BUT? In Korean you could say the sentence, and then say 그렇지만 and then go on with the catch. This is for beginners. Fine, I know we are indeed, beginners but we could do better than that! You could attach ~지만 to the verb stem and then state the contrasting statement. That way you will have a compound sentence! Sounds cool! And our best example would be: Korean is interesting but difficult. You could say: 한국어가재미있지만어려워요. If you decide to split them into two sentences, the BUT becomes HOWEVER, and the sentence would look like: 한국어가재미있어요. 그렇지만, 어려워요.

THURSDAY: Chapter Twenty –힌국어 공부가어때요?

Now we make comparisons! We’re progressing, how cool. How do you say that two things are similar? Do you remember ~하고 which you attach to nouns when you want to enumerate more than one? In short, to mean AND? You use this to join the two being compared, and then use either verb which both mean “to be similar to” which are 같다 and 비슷하다. For example: Korean is similar to Japanese. 한국어하고일본어는비슷해요 or한국어하고일본어는같아요.

FRIDAY: Chapter Twenty –힌국어 공부가어때요?

What if they are different? Same same, you just change the verb. The verb which means “to be different from” is 다르다. Korean is different from Japanese. 한국어하고일본어는딜라요. Wow. That was short.

For next week I would be covering lesson twenty one and 2/3 of lesson twenty three. We can do this guys! AJA! The goal is to pass the lowest level of TOPIK in April 2012! =)