Strangers and Elders

So, in one month, my sister Sang Hyun will be visiting NY/and the US for the first time....for a whole month. As promised, I will be posting a regular Korean primer for her imminent arrival.

There are no difficult tonal or glottal sounds to worry about in the Korean language. If you see a y as the second letter (as in Hyun), it is pronounced like the y in you not like the vowels i or e. So Hyun is pronounced like "yun" with the "h" sound prefacing it. 

As you may already know from various ethnic (and offensive!) jokes, there is no r or l in Korean, but rather a letter somewhere in between. The tongue is not quite as curled back as for an r, but not on the tongue either, like for an l. It can sometimes sound like "d."

Okay anyway, so here are some words. 

Small chat.

An-yang-ha-seh-yo hello (ha-say-yo is the formal ending used

for strangers and elders)

Peg-oh-pah-yo? Are you hungry? Pretty much the first 

question Koreans ask when you enter their 

home/meet you. Always appropriate to ask.

Peg-oh-pah-yo. I am hungry. (Changing the intonation 

makes a question a statement—like English).

Mah-shi-ssuh-yo?/. Is it delicious?/It is delicious.

____jju-seh-yo. Give me___ (polite way for request.)

Mek-chu jju-seh-yo.  Give me a beer (polite).

____iss-suh-yo?/. Do you have___?/I (we) have___.

Kimchee iss-suh-yo?/. Do you have kimchee?/We have kimchee.

Cho-ah-yo. I like it.

cho-gum a little

Cho-gum peg-oh-pah-yo. I am a little hungry.

mah-nee a lot/many/very

Mah-nee peg-oh-pah-yo. I am very hungry.

Numbers.

Koreans always ask how old you are. It will probably be the second thing they ask you after "are you hungry." Oh yeah, since the language is very hierarchy-based, this kinda makes sense. In which case, most of you, my friends, will only really need to count to 30ish.

Also, Koreans use Korean and Chinese numbers. Korean for hours and ages, Chinese for minutes, months, money. I don't know why.

Noh-nun, myuh-sal-ee-nun?  How old are you? (Literally: You, how many years have?) 

Na-nun ___sal im-ni-da. I am ____years old (polite).

(Korean)

1 hana

2 tul (like "tool" but shorter vowel)

3  set (soft "t," like "seh")

4 net (soft "t," like "neh")

5  tasa

6 yoh-sol

7 il-gohp

8 yoh-dohl

9 a-hope

10 yol

11 yol-hana

20 suh-mul (like mool, but shorter)

30 soh-run

33 soh-run set

39 soh-run a-hope

40  ma-hun

50 swin

60 yeh-sun

70 ee-run

80 yo-dun

90 a-hun

100 bek

Kam-sa-ham-ni-da!  Thank you!

And if anyone knows how to create columns in this thing, let me know!