Korean expressions
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Korean building blocks
In my quest to improve my conversational skills in general and my narrative skills in particular, I have laid off all the grammar and vocab cramming for the time being. Instead I have been listening, reading, and speaking like crazy. For listening I’ve found the most amazing resource on youtube. If you type in 세바시 you will be…
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Meeting my LP and finishing my drama
Yesterday, I met my language partner for a very interesting session about political systems. In three weeks we’ll have an election to the parliament, so the topic was motivated by all the political campaigns in the Danish media and all the mug shots of politicians and their slogans currently hanging from every lamp post in…
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Rusty Korean?
녹슬었을까봐 조금 걱정했어요. (I was afraid that my Korean had become too rusty.) I told this to my LP whom I was finally able to meet up with yesterday after a three-week hiatus due to various circumstances involving travel, changing schedules, and unplanned meetings. It was soooo nice to be able to speak Korean again, and she…
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Four-syllable words in Korean
Not to be confused with four-letter words, these are words of Chinese origin used idiomatically for linguistic efficiency. A few examples: 십중팔구(十中八九) lit. meaning: 8 or 9 out of 10; use: “most likely” 세면도구 (洗面道具) lit. meaning: syllables of various personal hygiene activities; use: “toiletries” 유구무언 (有口無言) lit. meaning: to have nothing to say; use: “offer no…
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A Korean listening challenge
Earlier this week, Jeremy from MotivateKorean kindly sent me a link to a youtube video where a Korean professor of philosophy gives a talk about how we currently live in a polarized society and how we may achieve the right balance. It is about 20 minutes long and quite challenging but I’m sure you’ll find it worth listening to.…
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My hanja hunt
I’ve really come to enjoy the game of building my Korean vocabulary through hanjas. This morning when I was reviewing the new words from my most recent TTMIK news delivery I came across the word 획득하다 meaning “to acquire or obtain”. I definitely recognized the 득, and wondered if it was the same 득 as in 설득 (persuasion). Indeed…
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The struggle of retaining and building Korean vocabulary
Ever since I started subscribing to TTMIK’s “News in Korean” my reading speed and vocabulary have both improved rapidly. While that is a huge step forward, I felt that I was having a hard time learning and retaining the often specialized vocabulary presented in the news articles. Until now I’ve studied with the articles by looking over the…
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Feeling positive about Korean negatives
Cryptic title, huh? Well, since I started reading the TTMIK News articles I’ve encountered quite a few semi-advanced negative Korean words, so I’ve been meaning to dig into the matter of how to construct these negations in Korean. And what better way than writing a blog post about it? ^^ Most negations in English are simply constructed by…
Sofie to Korea 