Korean Komics

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A: I need a doctor! 의사가 필요해요!

B: I'm not a doctor. 저는 의사가 아니에요.

A: Just do it! 그냥 해!

B: Really, I'm not a doctor! 정말, 저는 의사가 아니에요.

B: I'm a chicken. 저는 닭이에요.

Yep.

Twitter, Pop, and the Korean Language

Image text: 또 여드름? 안돼!!!!!!

Translation: Pimple again? NO!!!!!!

Text and translation courtesy of @KoreanEveryDay on Twitter.

또: another

여드름: pimple/acne

안돼: no (seems to be stronger than 아니요 and more of an interjection, more of a "not that!" or an "oh god why" than a simple "no")

...so I didn't actually write this one, but it's a fun phrase, and it gives me a chance to point out a couple other websites that might be of interest to people learning Korean. The first is busyatom.com, which is actually where I found this phrase in the first place; BusyAtom.com also has some video lessons about Korean grammar that I find helpful.

While I'm talking about other websites, http://kpopcorn.com/ is a website whose tagline is "learn Korean with K-pop". I haven't really looked at the site much yet, but I think it's an interesting idea, and I might translate some lyrics in a future post.

Ice Cream

Korean text:

나는 비명질러.

너는 비명질러.

모두는 비명지르려고 아이스크림을 받아.

Intended translation:

I scream.

You scream.

We all scream for ice cream.

Notes:

Okay, so I realize it's not as catchy in Korean. I struggled a bit on the pronoun choice here, eventually settling on the informal '나' and '너' pronouns for I/you and '모두' (everyone) instead of '우리' for "we all". The last sentence is also crazy because of the "for..." part. I looked up prepositions for a while ("을위한" seemed like one possibility), but this seemed like a good opportunity to use a conjunctive form of the 비명지르다 verb, so I tried to do that (with ice cream as the direct object for the "to receive" verb in the second clause.

...what on Earth am I doing?

Edit: Google is currently translating my last sentence as "Ice cream is going to take all the screaming," which isn't quite correct. Google's suggestion for "receive ice cream" is "아이스크림을받을 수". Perhaps "모두는 아이스크림을 비명질러 받아" works? Or "모두는 아이스크림을 비명질러 받을 거야"?

Hello? Yes, this is dog.

Image text: 여보세요? 네, 개가예요.

Intended translation: Hello? Yes, this is dog.

For those of you who are wondering about the strange grammar in the intended English translation, the text is from this internet meme.

여보세요: hello

네: yes

개: dog

-예요: a variation of 이다 (to be)

I've edited the last part of this several times now. In my first attempt, I wrote it as "개가여요" then I changed that to "개가이여요" before changing it to "개여요" and finally "개예요".

Les Ananas Ne Parlent Pas

Image text: 파인애플들은 말안해요

Intended translation: Pineapples don't talk!

This image is, of course, a reference to the French TV series Téléfrançais that was produced by TVOntario back in the day (before I was born). The line "les ananas ne parlent pas" (pineapples don't talk) is repeated frequently in the first episode of the series. Apparently, there are a lot of people in Canada who know this one French line without knowing anything else in the language.

In my attempt to translate the phrase into Korean, I ran into a couple grammatical things I hadn't seen before. In particular, I needed to figure out how to negate a verb (I'm using the '안' particle-like-thingamajig here) and how pluralization works (I went with tacking on a '들' before the '은' subject identifier). Is any of this correct? I don't know, but I'm sure I'll find out sooner or later.

"jjiktta"

찍다: to spear, to stamp, to take a picture.

카메라: camera

창: spear

Edit: I guess I drew more of a 'stomp' than a 'stamp' but you can think of it as his foot stamping that thing's face with a footprint, maybe? Also, the thing that's being speared is supposed to be 물고기 (fish).

Crazy Dinosaur

Image text (Korean): 미친 공룡 [michin gongnyong]

Intended translation: Crazy Dinosaur

An Introduction

Dear family, friends, and internet strangers,

My name is Matt and I want to learn Korean.

I've wanted to know Korean for most of my life, if for no better reason than the fact that it would allow me to speak to half of my family, but I've only recently developed enough motivation to really want to learn the language. Unfortunately, learning languages is something that most people usually only do when they're really young and not, say, when they're over twenty years old and busy studying math and programming all day.

However, the point of this blog is not to dwell on the difficulties of language learning. Instead, my goal is to post any interesting Korean words, phrases, sentences, and other language-y type things that I can think up. Hopefully this will give me some motivation to keep learning (besides that whole talking to family thing) while giving people who do speak Korean something to laugh/grimace about. If you speak Korean, then please feel free to inform me about any mistakes I make on this website (once you finish laughing/grimacing) by posting a comment.

Okay, cool. That seems like a decent enough introduction. Now for the actual content of this post: the Korean text in the lead image of this post reads "매튜는 한국을 배워." This is intended to mean "Matthew learns Korean." This is pretty much the first Korean sentence I've actually tried to construct, so I'm not too sure about the 는 and 을 particles or the tense of the 배우다 verb, but they seemed like reasonable guesses.

안녕히 겨세요,

Matt