Like most cultures, Koreans celebrate birthdays. Although they calculate age a bit differently (look forward to a post on that in the future), they have birthday parties, sing happy birthday, and enjoy the time with their friends and families.
미역국 is traditionally eaten on birthdays here, and many feel it is not a complete birthday without it.
These are the common and casual ways of what roughly translates to good luck in Korean. Some Korean books explain these really well. You have probably heard “화이팅” (also sometime 파이팅/fighting) on dramas or just around your Korean friends. The other two are also very common and used among close people and friends. Like telling someone to have a good day, you want to send your friends off with a good feeling of confidence to accomplish whatever it is they need to accomplish.
Here we introduce you to how to say days of the week in Korean. All of them end in “요일” (kind of like “day” in English) and can be shortened to just the first syllable (common on calendars and good for quickly sharing information).
If you study these for even just an hour, you should be able to memorize them easily and once you do that, it’s just a matter of daily use and applying it to your everyday life.
Korean has a lot of family names that are also easy to remember vocabulary words. This is pretty common for many other last names as well. If you don’t know it, Koreans basically have 3 syllables in their name with the family name appearing first (rarely you may meet someone with 4 syllables…I’ve met one in my entire time in Korea).
These are all very basic words for years that you will come across often. Notice that the word for year changes depending on the situation.
When counting years using “년”, sino numbers are used. When using “해”, native numbers are used. 년 is most commonly used after years, for example to say 2017, we would add “년” to the end. so it becomes 2017년.
Here are some useful Korean words for when you are at the coffee shop. Notice that most of the vocabulary are just Konglish versions of their name in English so the only thing you have to worry about is getting that Korean sound to it when you speak it (which can be very awkward at first). If you want to study even more and improve your Korean, check out our ebooks over at the Dom & Hyo Store.
For today’s vocabulary, we’re just introducing some basic drinks that are easy to learn. You might need to know these when ordering something. Vocabulary: 물 (mul) = Water 주스 (ju-seu) = Juice 우유 (u-yu) = Milk 콜라 (kol-la) = Cola/Coke 맥주 (maek-ju) = Beer 커피 (keo-pi) = Coffee 차 (cha) = Tea 핫초코 (hat-cho-ko) = … Read more
Here is part 2 of our sicknesses & illnesses vocabulary. You may need to use some of these if you’re ever in the hospital in Korea. If you want to study even more and improve your Korean, check out our ebooks over at the Dom & Hyo Store.
This will be part one of a series on sicknesses, symptoms, and medical words in Korean. Knowing these can be very helpful if you need to go to the hospital in Korea. These are also just good to know in general.
If you are ever in the hospital, here are some common Korean phrases you can use to describe the symptoms you have.