Dates

Last posts was all about time, it’s going to be dates this time around.  During my first few days of posting, I was really aiming for Hangul lesson a day… admittedly I couldn’t keep up with a daily posting due to an equally important thing –my bread and butter.  Anyway,  it was foolish for me to include dates in Korean in my post during those times as one of the features of blogging is to have date and time stamp of post.

Interestingly, when giving dates in Korean the rule is to start from the longest to the shortest time element.  This is opposite how dates are relayed in English.  For example, in English we would normally say:

2:30 PM, Monday, July 14, 2008

In Korean this will be expressed as: 이천팔년 칠월 십사일 월요일, 오후 두시 삼십분 (ichon.palnyon, chilwol shipsa.il wolyoil, ohu dushi samshippan).  Literally this translates to:

• 이천팔년 – 2008
• 칠월 십사일 – July 14 day
• 월요일 – Monday
• 오후 두시 삼십분 – afternoon 2 o’clock 30 minutes

So with just the date the format is simply 이천팔년 칠월 십사일  which is 2008 July 14 or in most cases you will see this format 2008년 7월 14일 (literally year 2008 7th month 14th day).