Day: October 24, 2010

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Reflections and Answers

After nearly two months of hiatus i realized that there are hundreds of people reading my blog and there are questions left unanswered.  I personally get frustrated when I don’t get answers to questions so i know how it feels to be waiting for one.  I am actually inspired with all the encouragements I get from reader’s messages so i already registered this hanguladay.com domain which means i really had to renew my dedication towards learning this language.  However, I would like to apologize to those who requests for email correspondences, I may not be able to return emails one on one as I have a day job.

A lot of visitors requests for translations of names.  Just to clarify, I only write names in Hangul and never translate any name to Korean.  Unless your name is a common noun then chances are I can provide the Korean counterpart; like if your name is Rain then 비 (bi) is the Korean for this word.  It’s totally different when you write it straightforward as Rain which is 레인 (Rein).   So I hope readers would understand this, if you want to get a Korean name you need to have someone, a Korean native perhaps, to give you one.

Also, to set things straight, I am not qualified to teach Korean so please don’t go ask me to coach you or teach you the language.   I myself is learning, I can only impart what I have learned from the point of view of someone who is not speaking English as first Language.  Similar to how I have learned English back on my primary days in school,  I try to relate learning Korean with the way English has been taught in school.  This is why I looked for books and other reference materials to learn.   I have question on tenses, grammar, word use etc.  I wanted to understand the Language just like how a young student may seek to learn a second language so I am trying to explain my learnings with this in mind.  With my interest in Korean culture, I read books about their history and promised to visit South Korea at least once every year.   So some questions not related to Hangul but relevant to South Korea, I may be able to answer or provide opinion on. Most specially, I also learn from suggestions. Likewise, I may commit some errors when i type some words so I would appreciate if you can point it out nicely.  I am not competing with anyone’s competency in Hangul.

Thank you for visiting my site.  I hope we learn together and become conversant one day =)

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Back to Modifiers

It’s been a long time since I have opened my Continuing Korean book.  The book has 500+ pages, I have started reading it last year and up to now I am still at page 84.  True to what the others have been saying, compared to Elementary Korean, Continuing Korean is a big challenge.  One of the most difficult lesson I have encountered is on the use of (으) ㄴ modifiers.

At a glance transforming verbs and adjectives into modifier form seems to be easy.  Here is how it is done.  은  is normally added to verbs or adjectives ending in consonant and ㄴ for those ending in vowel.  Some examples are as follows:

  • 앉은 (anjeun)  sit
  • 먹은 (mokeun) eat
  • 만난 (mannan) meet
  • 한 (han) do

Does look simple right? Well there is an exceptions on how you create the modifier form of verbs and adjectives.  This exception is on those L-extending vowel bases.  It’s really hard to explain this L-extending vowel bases but the way I understand it is that these are verbs that normally ends in ㄹ however in some uses, the ㄹ is dropped before attaching the modifier or marker.  So for verbs like 살 (sal) which means live it would be 산 (san)  and for 놀 (nol) which means play it would be 논 (non).  Now imagine these words being used in a not so simple sentence. I bet it would be difficult for learners like me to figure out when its a modifier and when its actually the word itself.  Like 산 do exists as a word which means mountain.

I guess being able to use modifiers in Korean would mean you have truly leveled up in the Language since modifiers like this will now allow you to create more complex sentences or compound sentences.  This topic needs serious a lot of study time.  Hmm the last two words might be a good start to do some exercise 공부한 시간 (gongbuhan shikan) is study time =)