-admin: soyah
…it’s called consonant assimilation and it makes it easier to pronounce the words.
that’s how my teacher at kyunghee explained it to me.
Like Cheongnyangni Station 청량리역
THE rieul assimilates to the Nieng to make the pronunciation easier, because otherwise the sentence would be choppy and scientifically/linguistically humans are programmed to make things as easy as possible when trying to pronounce things.
Plus, the korean language is slowly getting lazier with their grammer and pronunciation rules, especially with the reuse of loanwords (even though the gov’t has been trying to change this)
Referenced Posts:
[submitted by cassie-ssi]
What is 의 and how do we use it?
의 is a possessive pronoun as it is expressed in english :)
for example: 우리 (we, us) + 사랑 (love) = 우리의 사랑 (our love)
applying on other pronouns: I=내 |My=나의 you=너 |Yours=너의 We=우리 |Our=우리의
However it’s not necessarily used, you can say 우리 사랑 and it would totally make sense, in fact, Koreans don’t usually use it to express possesion; they would just use the pronoun and object and it would directly be understood as possesive, like 내 이름 은(my name is), you didn’t use 의 here but it’s still correct :D
How is it pronounced? It may be a bit hard for some foreigners to pronounce it but it is pronounced as 애 (ae).
Hey guys,
We’re doing introductions all day, so here’s mine: I’m Alex and I’m the founder of this blog. I started this tumblr when someone asked me to on my personal account and it gained a lot more momentum than I expected.
I’m a second generation Korean-American from Northern California and speak English as my first language. I went to Korean language schools since I was about five, and attended them all the way through high school. Unfortunately, I never really paid much attention during those classes, so my working knowledge of Korean is pretty limited. I can help with basic grammar and maybe pronunciation, and pretty much elementary topics like colors and directions and stuff like that. If you’re interested at all, I can also answer questions about my experiences as a Korean-American, like how my family celebrates holidays or how we use the language.
If you want to learn more about me, just ask me over on my personal tumblr, otherwise I look forward to answering any questions you might have on Korean!
I’ve been trying to think of a linguistic or formulaic reason why ㅂ is pronounced with a ‘m’ sound for a while and can’t think of any better reason than it’s easier to say. Like other languages, Koreans like to change and morph the language in order to make things easier to pronounce or simply because tastes change.
To answer your question more specifically, there are a few consonants that do this in addition to ㅂ. The consonants ㄱ,ㄷ,ㅇ, and ㅊ come to mind first. These consonants (with the exception of ㅇ) have a harder sound that wouldn’t really work at the end of a character. So to solve this, they are usually turned into plosives, changing their sounds a bit, depending on the consonant. ㅇ typically has no sound as the first consonant, but is pronounced with a ‘ng’ plosive sound as the second. All this turns into a sort of slurring or running words together, changing the sound almost entirely. For example, in 감사합니다, the ‘b’ sound is pronounced as an ‘m’ because it flows better. If you pronounce it slower, each sound is more emphasized, but if you start saying it faster and faster, your brain just kind of automatically starts making that change.
I’ve never really thought of about this phenomenon, so I don’t have a better answer. I can’t remember if this happens with any other consonants except these hard ones, so I think this might be it for special pronunciations. Let us know if we need to do a better job explaining it.
젠장 (jen-jang) : Shit, goddamn, damn it
씨발 (shi-bal) : Fuck, fucking
병신 (byung-shin) : Dumbass, retard
엿먹어 (yut-mugguh) : Fuck you
미친놈 (mee-cheen-nom) : Crazy bastard
미친년 (mee-cheen-nyun) : Crazy bitch
걸레같은 년 (gul-leh-gat-eun-nyun) : Slut, whore
꺼저 (gguh-juh) : Get the hell out, leave me alone
씹새끼 (shib-seh-ggi) : Piece of shit, bitch, fucker
지랄 (ji-ral) : Bullshit
새해복 많이 받으세요! Happy Lunar New Year! January 23rd is 설날, or Lunar New Year in Korea!
Traditionally, families meet up at the head of the family’s house for New Years. This usually means a Grandpa or someone similar.
From what I understand, my family makes a slightly bigger deal of New Years because we all live relatively close to each other. We take the whole day to celebrate, where some other families may just visit their grandparents in the evening.
Our New Years starts by going to an aunt’s house (My dad was the only boy in the family) to pay our respects to those deceased. This involves laying out a full meal and everyone pouring shots for our ancestors. (If you don’t know already, Koreans love to drink.) This is usually done by generation, with each generation collectively pouring one shot. For example, my brother, my cousins, and I would all help pour one shot for our ancestor.
Afterwards, we eat lunch, always involving 떡국. Ddukguk can be prepared in a lot of ways, but my family keeps it simple. Usually, it’s just Korean rice cakes, dumplings, and egg drops in the soup.
The kids then perform 세배. 세배 is paying respects to your living elders, like aunts and uncles, grandparents, and parents. Kids have to do a full traditional bow and listen to their elders give out advice. It is important that while you’re bowing, you can either wish them a happy new year (새해복 많이 받으세요) or good health (건강 하세요) or both. After the advice that we don’t listen to (kidding.) they give us money to celebrate the New Year. The amount is whatever they see appropriate, but if you have a fairly large family, you can come up with a lot of profit.
The bow is slightly more complicated than just getting on your knees and putting your head down. There’s a certain code of etiquette that must be followed, though not many people mind anymore. Most everyone uses the male version of the bow when doing sebae, but if you’re a lady wearing a dress or hanbok, there’s another way of bowing without getting your clothes dirty. Check this video out courtesy of koreanclass101.com to see it in action.
My family doesn’t really play that many traditional games for New Years anymore for a variety of reasons, but we used to play a lot of Yut No Ri or, as it is now romanized as, yunnori. The rules of yunnori are complicated and I’m not even sure if I can play it anymore, but it involves a circular board, four playable pieces, a mat or blanket, and four semi-rounded sticks. The sticks act like dice, telling you how far you can move one of your pieces. The goal of the game is to get all four of your pieces around the board without getting eaten.
[Video] Korean Phrases for Shopping (As a Customer)
Do you like shopping? 경화 says she does! Have you ever done any shopping in Korean or in Korea before? In this video lesson we introduce some essential shopping phrases in Korean. Watch the video and repeat after the phrases out loud! 감사합니다!
The phrases used in this lesson:
Do you have…? Is there…?
= … 있어요? [i-sseo-yo?]
I will just look around.
= 그냥 볼게요. [geu-nyang bol-ge-yo.]
= 그냥 둘러볼게요. [geu-nyang dul-leo bol-ge-yo.]
How much is this?
= 이거 얼마예요? [i-geo eol-ma-ye-yo?]
Can I try this on?
= 입어 봐도 되나요? [i-beo bwa-do doe-na-yo?]
= 입어 볼 수 있나요? [i-beo bol su it-na-yo?]
Excuse me.
= 저기요. [jeo-gi-yo.]
= 여기요. [yeo-gi-yo.]
I’ll take this. / I’ll buy this.
= 이거 주세요. [i-geo ju-se-yo.]
= 이거 살게요. [i-geo sal-ge-yo.]
Do you have a different color?
= 이거 다른 색(깔)은 없어요? [i-geo da-reun saeg(-kkal)-eun eop-seo-yo?
I’ll come again. / I’ll look around more and come again later.
= 다시 올게요. [da-si ol-ge-yo.]
= 좀 더 둘러보고 올게요. [jom deo dul-leo-bo-go ol-ge-yo.]
Good-bye. (when you’re leaving)
= 안녕히 계세요. [an-nyeong-hi gye-se-yo.]
This lesson is also available at HaruKorean – be sure to make your practice shopping sentences in Korean and get corrections!
AnonymousThis is an excellent question, since it may help some people.
Now, if you’ve read all of my lessons - first of all, thank you - you have about as much knowledge about Korean as me. So it’s probably best I tell you guys some tricks I use to get decent translations out of Google Translate. All of these are assuming that normal sentence structure is used and not, say, internet short hand.
