Emoticons

Emoticons are an important part of text messages and emails in Korea. People use them to soften their words, express emotion, and generally find polite and indirect ways of asking/saying something respectfully. We’ve covered some of the Korea ones-see examples below. These can be written using Korean or English letters.

Korean emoticons
TT โ€“ eyes crying (describing a sad situation)
^^ – eyes up (making something seem light or expressing happiness-useful for asking someone to do something for you)-similar to ๐Ÿ™‚
OTL-from the left side, the O is a head touching the floor, T is the body with hands to the floor, and L is the legs kneeling. Means you are banging your head on the ground when you feel frustrated or disappointed.
hh or hhh โ€“ Soft laugh (joking together with someone but not directed at either person)
Kk or kkk โ€“ When you make a joke at someoneโ€™s expense (about them) (k is supposed to be the sound of laughter)

For many Western adults, emoticons are considered childish or too cute, and except for the smile/frown/sly faces, they’re infrequently used. Check out this link. Itโ€™s supposed to be humorous, but I can honestly see a use for some of these in Western emails and messages.^^

653-Typing-in-Korean654-Typing in Korean 2

Loading

March 1 Independence Movement – Easy to Learn Korean 395-396

Korean Flag
One of the many Korean flags seen along Nonhyeon Rd in Seocho-gu, Seoul.

This weekend, flags were placed along the trunk streets of Seoul in honor of the March, 1 1919 Korean Independence Movement and Park Geun-Hye’s Inauguration Ceremony. Taegukgi (ํƒœ๊ทน๊ธฐ) is the name of the Korean flag.

The holiday commemorates the quintessential non-violent demonstration of Koreans against Japanese colonial rule via a Declaration of Independence. Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910-1945.

395 March 1st Independent Movement396 March 1st Independent Movement 2

Loading

Seoul City Hall

20130223-223045.jpg

The recently re-designed $256 million Seoul City Hall opened on August 27,2012 after three years of construction. The winning team of designers, iArc Architects, were selected from a competition. There’s an interesting contrast between the colonial Japanese era building, built in 1926, and the newly constructed glass building.
Interesting fact: The expansion consists of 7,000 glass panes that were later found to break city codes written for energy efficiency.

I like the contrast, but there were local TV reports claiming that many people felt that the new design didn’t have the proper harmony with the area or the existing structure.

Loading

Easy to Learn Korean 781 – Washing the Dishes

Image

781-Washing Dishes

Loading

Easy to Learn Korean 780 – Grammar-Punctuation (Part Two)

780-Grammar Punctuation 2

Loading

Popular catchphrase expressions: (verb stem)+๊ธฐ ์žˆ๊ธฐ ์—†๊ธฐ?

Here’s a question from reader L. Coimbra:

Hi, ์•ˆ๋…•ํ•˜์„ธ์š”? ^^
Thank you for the great job you’ve being doing spreading the Korean Language/Culture worldwide via internet. Could you explain to me what is the role of ์žˆ๊ธฐ ์—†๊ธฐ in this grammatic structure: “verb stem+๊ธฐ ์žˆ๊ธฐ/์—†๊ธฐ”? I can understand the “verb stem+๊ธฐ” portion.

The is a popular phrase that comes from a comedic skit on the Korean TV show Gag Concert that airs on KBS2 on Sunday nights. The show has been running since 1999.

Use
This expression is used prior to revealing something surprising, shocking, or secret. The phrase is not standard Korean and is only used by young girls (not men) to be funny or sound cute. If an adult uses this expression it must be used in a joking manner else the speaker will look childish.

Example 1 [Revealing a secret]: ๋งํ•˜๋‹ค to speak
Standard form ๋งํ•˜์ง€ ๋งˆ์„ธ์š”. “Don’t say it.”
TV show form ๋งํ•˜๊ธฐ ์žˆ๊ธฐ ์—†๊ธฐ? “If I tell you (something), will you tell someone else or will you not tell someone else?”

Example 2 [Preventing anger]: ํ™”๋‚ด๋‹ค to be angry
Standard form ํ™”๋‚ด์ง€ ๋งˆ์„ธ์š”. “Don’t be angry.”
TV show form ํ™”๋‚ด๊ธฐ ์žˆ๊ธ” ์—†๊ธฐ? “If I say it to you, will you be angry or not angry?”

Note: The Korean language doesn’t explicitly require the word ‘or’ and so putting ์žˆ๊ธฐ ์—†๊ธฐ together is like asking, “which one (์žˆ๊ธฐ or ์—†๊ธฐ) (I will or I won’t)?”

If the person’s answer is ์—†๊ธฐ (I won’t …), you can procede to tell them the shocking information.

This expression is supposed to be fun and take some of the shock away from what you’re about to reveal.

Expect an article on this!

Loading