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.
A good friend of mine visited Korea this past summer and suggested I write a lesson on money. Seeing as how I haven’t written anything original in literally months, I thought it was worth writing about.
If you want to learn how to count money in Korean LIKE A BOSS, read after the cut!
Learn how to say “this” “that” “it” and “the” in Korean.
In this lesson, you can learn how to say “this” “that” “it” and “the” in Korean. In English, “this” and “that” can work as both modifiers and pronouns, but you need to use different words in Korean. This is because in Korean “this” as in “this is a book” is composed of two parts, 이 (this) + 거 (thing). Find out more about how to use these words in Korean by listening to the lesson and checking out the free PDF file attached to the lesson. If you have any question, as always, please feel free to leave them here! 감사합니다!
<Level 1 Lesson 7 / This, That, It / 이, 그, 저>
I found a mistake in the sentence: “Your cookie is in the kitchen.” — 과일은 부억에 있어.
The word for kitchen is not 부억 but actually 부엌. You really shouldn’t use Google Translate. It always has errors when it translates from Korean-English or visa versa.^^
Admin Notes: That might actually be my mistake. Either way, thank you for the correction!
So about a week ago, I put out a question text post asking for topics to write a lesson about. This was a feeble attempt to make this a more collaborative tumblr. And I was honestly somewhat surprised when people responded. With several different topics suggested. So I’ve decided to group these off on their own as “Reader Requests”.
The first Reader Request is the first answer to the question submitted by then ghadah-photography, now ghadahme.
Alright. So. Grammar is not exactly my strong suit. If it was, I wouldn’t have created this tumblr to begin with. But I can help with the whole forms of “I” and “You” issue.
So ghadahme gave a couple different characters for us to use: 나, 너, 내가, 네가, 저, and 당신. I’m going to go through these and write what in my experience I’ve used them for.
There is something that I should note here though and it may explain some of the confusion that you’ve been having with “I” and “you”. The subject is typically dropped in Korean. I believe this is called a Null Subject Language. (Anybody here who studies linguistics, please let me know if I’ve got that right.) I’ve seen this mostly used in the cases of 나 and 너. This means while you can say 나 and 너 as the subject or topic of your sentence, good grammar dictates that if it’s obvious you’re talking about “I” or “you”, you drop them.
I think that about covers it. Now I know I’m prone to mistakes and oversights, as many people have told me. So if you know someone who knows the language better than me, let me know what they said was wrong. Most of the time, they’re right and I’ll post the corrections. Otherwise, hope this was an informative and helpful lesson on the various forms of “I” and “you”. If you’re looking for and actual grammar point lesson, just let me know via ask box. If you have a question about anything I’ve written here, put it in the ask box also and I’ll try to answer it as fast as I can. Until next time guys, 안녕~
My tutor told me to learn the names of the Hangul letters. I’ve known the sounds of each letter for years, but I didn’t know they actually had names!
Oh wow, look at that. Answers. This is unprecedented. Okay. Uhm… I have midterms until Friday the 19th, so I won’t be able to post my lesson for a while, but rest assured, a lesson is forthcoming!
Special attention will be paid to Lee Hyori. Not really. Maybe.
I’m willing to bet that nobody answers this, so I’m very anxious to be proven wrong. Anything is fair game. Grammar points? Sure. Food? You got it. Culture and Customs? Absolutely. You tell me, and I’ll try to write something to fit your needs.
Just read through the “Grammar Point 에/에서” notes that you posted, and wanted to leave some comments for you.
영수는 학교에서 벌서 갔어요.
In this case, you would use “에” and not “에서“. Also, the word for already should be written as “벌써” . So, the correct sentence should look like this:
영수는 학교에 벌써 갔어요.
Lastly, 바다가에서 should be written as “바다갓에서”
-Cynthia
This lesson’s overdue a month now. I really don’t think I was cut out for the whole usual update thing. I’m just really bad at it. So I wrote this out in little over half an hour, so not the lesson I really planned on giving. Anyway, this next lesson’s gonna be about 에/에서.
There’s not a lot I can say about this one, but for me, it was probably the first grammar point that I learned in high school that I fully grasped and used regularly. Hell, it’s one of like two that I still remember and the only one that I still use, if incorrectly sometimes. Anyway, when to use these. 에/에서 are used when addressing a place. 에 is used when something or someone is at a place. 에서 is used when an action is involved. You could look at it so that 에 is the passive voice while 에서 is the more active. (are those two the right words? I don’t know anymore).
Uhm… let’s see. Examples. Situations where you would use 에 would be something like:
에서 would be used in situations like:
Yep. This one was written kinda fast, but I think that it does it’s job. Apparently, Google Translate doesn’t think so. So if any of you guys are there to check up on how I’m doing or know more than me or know someone who knows more than myself, then please correct me. I promise I won’t get mad.
