Learning Korean :)

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thanks for the detailed explanation!
So bro-in-law on the husband’s side is ‘ajubeonim’
and a woman would call the husband of her sister ‘hyeongbu’? I’ve heard that in a few dramas

In the variety show Busted, Sejeong always calls Sehun ‘hyeong’, both on and off-screen. That’s an exception, right? She’s doing it as her own personal thing and it’s not a rule?

could you give me review/summary? the Viki summary is literally only one sentence in English :expressionless: thought there’s a whole essay for Korean and I’ll take an entire day to read :joy:

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You know, these 50-episode family dramas that show how the majority of Koreans still think? Well, that one is from 5 years ago. It’s the story of a mother who is the real head of the household and tries to do what she thinks is the best for her children - who all have quite different ideas and pursue their own love stories and make their own career choices. If you liked Five Children, Father is Strange and Once Again, you’ll love this one too. Of course one does suffer in seeing the very old-fashioned pre-conceived ideas that seem absurd to us, but with your own Indian background you probably wouldn’t find all this so foreign and out-of-this-world.
Most of everything, there is some great acting from the mother and the father couple. Incredible actors, both. And the couples are all cute.
Enough of this, as it’s seriously off-topic. But I heartily recommend this drama.

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Some girls don’t like the word ‘oppa’ and just call guys ‘hyeong’. Maybe she’s like that too (I haven’t watched that show).

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@vivi_1485, I haven’t watched the show so I am not sure of the context but young females will sometimes use “hyeong” instead of “oppa” to show that the relationship is very close but strictly platonic. You also see this quite a bit between a female cop and her male partner.

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That’s correct.

Ah, yes. I forgot that there are times when a girl would call an older boy “hyeong.” It’s not actually an official term but sometimes tomboyish girls would do that to show the “platonic” relationship between the two. It shows that she has no interest in him whatsoever as a potential future boyfriend and the boy should think of her as his “younger brother” rather than a girl/potential girlfriend. I didn’t see that particular variety show and I don’t even know who Sehun (which I assume is a guy?) is, but it sounds like that’s what’s happening in this scenario.

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I should have read your reply first before replying back to vivi, since you pretty much said the same thing as me already. :slight_smile:

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I think I sometimes forget how complex the use of Korean familiar terms is until I see comments in this forum. By the way, I think you are wonderful at explaining Korean language and culture.

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Happened in “Doctor Stranger”. Although in that particular case, the tomboyish girl was secretly in love with the charming doctor.

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Bonjour,
j’étudie le corĂ©en depuis plusieurs mois, via la mĂ©thode de korean dream.fr
Voici le lien
https://www.thekoreandream.fr/blog-coree-du-sud/category/apprendre-le-coreen/

En septembre 2021 je poursuivrai mes études au centre culturel coréen en Belgique

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I came across this video where she explains the reason herself.
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Yeah, I had watched this and thought maybe a lot of girls think this way, hence the doubt :sweat_smile:

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In case it has not been posted already, here is the link to the National Institute of Korean Language.

https://www.korean.go.kr/front_eng/main.do

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I have a question about learning Korean.
Do beginners learn first with hangul along with the pronunciation + definition written down, then progressively learn without the pronunciation written down or do they learn directly hangul without pronunciation?

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how do you learn hangul without knowing how to pronounce the alphabet? :thinking: the question is a little unclear


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:joy: After going through the alphabet, in order to learn sentences and new words, do beginners learn the hangul + the definition written down or do they also add the phonetic?

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At first most of us do, especially for pronounciation which does NOT follow the rules. After a couple of months, it’s only necessary in rare cases.
We learners of Korean would be the happiest people on earth if the pronounciation rules of Hangul were followed by modern Korean speakers. But most characters are not pronounced as we first learned them.

Changes at the beginning and end
For instance, you learn that a character is pronounced G and a character is pronounced B. And you feel happy and secure, “oh Hangul is easy, I already know these”.
However, shortly after, you’re told that they are pronounced G and B only inside a word, while at the beginning or end they are really pronounced a soft K and P. Which are not as forceful as the regular K and P. I can tell you that after a year of lessons and five years of dramas, I still can’t distinguish them when somebody speaks. (For Indians it should be easier, since they also have this difference between “p” and P (hhhh!) etc.).
There’s more. The G that became K turns back to G if you add a suffix starting from a vowel, and thus is not end anymore, but inside the letter. Or in compounds. Therefore the same word or verb is pronounced differently, according to what comes after it!

Weird batchim rules
There’s more. There is a group of consonants (D, S, J, TCH, T, H) that when they are at the end of the word and the next one starts with consonant, are ALL pronounced as T.
How logical is that?
If the consonants at the end of the word are two, then only one is pronounced. The rule being that it’s “the one that’s first in the alphabet”. But this rule is not always valid.
Again, if the next word starts with vowel, the original pronounciation comes back.

Stuffed nose pronounciation
There’s more. You realize, with great surprise and dismay, that when you always heard in dramas “De” (meaning “yes”), in reality it’s written “Ne”. And “dampion” (husband) is written “nampion”. What? What you hear as “Bian-he” (“I’m sorry”), in reality is “Mian-he”. Then you ask your Korean teacher: “Why do you pronounce N as D and M as B, as if you had a stuffed nose because of a cold?”
And the Korean “teacher” replies: “What are you talking about? The two sounds you just made are the same”.
“No, no, wait. One is bianhe and the other mianhe”.
“Yes, exactly, they are the same”.
Then you sigh and stop the conversation. They really can’t hear it’s a totally different sound? Moreover, in dramas, older characters, or when speaking more formally, pronounce “Ne” (as it’s written) and not “De”. So is one way more formal and the other more “sloppy”? The clueless, gawking, fumbling and irritatingly dumb female leads, for instance, all say “de”. Invariably. The male lead, if he’s a CEO or a lawyer, may say “ne” at times.

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Do you want to discourage people from learning Korean? :rofl:
Thank you for all this! Maybe we can learn that the “word” is pronounced and written like that, which I found difficult for adult foreigners!
Your conversations with your teacher sound really funny!

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In this, it’s no worse than English. At least Korean is consistent. English pronounciation doesn’t follow any kind of logic.
Think of draught, gauge and Gloucestershire or even breakfast, leisure (lehjur in English and leejur in American)

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After using Learn Mode this stuff had become way less confusing
because I can see the spelling along with the pronunciation, it gets a lot easier.
I also read somewhere that this:

is because they like speaking fast and for the ‘s’ sound you have to let out a little air. So they just don’t let the air out and end the word so it usually sounds like ‘th’. After I heard that, I understood the logic and went along with it :joy:

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:rofl: Batchim is why I have trouble spelling in Korean. I can read it ok for the most part as long as it is not fancy script but spelling is a chore because of batchim. I’ll figure it out eventually.

rough - ruff
though - tho
bough - bow
bought - bot
etc.

And don’t even ask me how to pronounce worcestershire sauce. We just say Wikisheer. :rofl:

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