So while trying to think of a new post for the blog, we realized we have never done a post on telling time in Korean. We did do a post on time words here awhile back so this will help with that post as well.

For time in Korean, there are two sets of numbers used. They are the native  Korean numbers and sino Korean numbers. For telling hours, you will want to use the native Korean numbers. For minutes, you will use the sino Korean numbers. So for example, if we wanted to say 1:05, we would say:

한 시 오분 (han si o-bun)

You can see “한” which is the number one in native Korean and then “시” which is used as a time counter for hours. After that you will see “오분”. “오” is the number 5 in sino Korean and “분” is a time counter for minutes.

What about…8:34?

We would say:

열덟 시 삼십사분 (yeol-deol si sam-sip-sa-bun)

Now if you want to say something like it’s two o’clock, then you would add “이예요” or “예요” depending on if the last letter is a vowel or a consonant.

It’s 3 o’clock = 세 시예요 (se si-ye-yo)

It’s 4:45 = 네 시 사십오분이예요 (ne si sa-sip-o-bun-i-ye-yo)

If you want to ask the time:

몇 시예요? (myeot si-ye-yo) = What time is it?

List of vocab in this infographic:

한 시 (han si) = one o’clock

두 시 (du si) = two o’clock

세 시 (se si) = three o’clock

네 시 (ne si) = four o’clock

다섯 시 (da-seot si) = five o’clock

여섯 시 (yeo-seot si) = six o’clock

일곱 시 (il-gob si) = seven o’clock

여덟 시 (yeo-deol si) = eight o’clock

아홉 시 (a-hop si) = nine o’clock

열 시 (yeol si) = ten o’clock

열한 시 (yeol-han si) = eleven o’clock

열두 시 (yeol-du si) = twelve o’clock

십오분 (sip-o-bun) = a quarter past

삼십분/반 (sam-sip-bun/ban) = half past

사십오분 (sa-sip-o-bun) = a quarter to

Colors can be a very complicated thing to learn in Korean. For starters, there are many words for the same color and each one has a different feeling when used. We’re not going to get too in depth about those in this post, but we will be releasing an ebook soon that will go in more in depth into colors.

For today, let’s just talk about the color red.

If you see the above word 빨간색, this is the standard noun form for the color red. So, if you just wanted to refer to the color itself, you would use this form. So just using the form 빨간색 would mean “the color red”. The syllable 색 acts as a noun modifier and means color.

Here is an example of how you could use it in a sentence.

빨간색 좋아해요. (I like the color red.)

Confusingly, there is another way to add a noun modifier. Let’s look at another version of the color red:

빨강 (bbal-gang)

This is another noun form of the color red and often gets confused with the one above. You will hear and see many people using 빨강색 which is incorrect. Used by itself, it would also mean “the color red”.

Here is another example sentence using this form:

빨강 좋아해요. (bbal-gan jo-a-hae-yo) = I like the color red.

Now, let’s talk about the adjective forms of the color red.

빨간 (bbal-gan)

As you can see here, this adjective form uses the base color word that you saw in the first example.

색 is not needed here as we are now not using the color as a noun, but as an adjective. So how would we use this to describe things? Let’s take a look:

빨간 사과 (bbal-gan sa-gwa) = The red apple

빨간 토마토 (bbal-gan to-ma-to) =  The red tomato

빨간 트럭  (bbal-gan teu-reok) = The red truck

To put it simply, we just add this in front of whatever it is we are describing. Let’s take a look at the other adjective form of the color red. Also note that adding 색 (빨간색 사과) is still acceptable as they mean the same thing, however, using the forms in the 3 examples above are considered grammatically correct.

빨갛다 (bbal-ga-tta)

The literal meaning of this is “to be red”. If you want to state that something IS red, then you would use this. You can also conjugate this just like you would any other Korean adjective or verb. Here is an example:

자동차 빨갛다.  (ja-dong-cha bbal-ga-tta) = The car is red.

It is an irregular descriptive verb, so it changes slightly when it is conjugated. This book is not focusing on grammar too much, so if you’re not familiar with verb conjugations quite yet, don’t get scared about them at this moment.

And that’s it! We will be doing more explanations of individual colors in future posts. in the meantime, learn some other basic colors from an earlier blog post of ours here.

Hey everyone! Hope you liked our previous post on vocabulary for items in the home. We also wanna let you guys know that we are working on a big 30day lesson package for beginners – intermediate learners who are learning Korean. Hyo has been hard at work with ideas and we’ve both been organizing them into a nice packet. Hopefully it will be available by mid May. We also have about 20 more cheat sheets coming as those have been pretty popular with many people.

Now for our word of the day: 개.  This was one of the first words I learned and remembered easily since it’s such a short and simple one syllable word. The only confusion one might have with this word is with the word for crab which is 게. They sound very similar (in fact, many Koreans make no distinction between the letters ㅔ and ㅐ anymore).

But any confusion should quickly pass as this is a word that you will use and hear often.

One thing about this word however is that most Koreans refer to dogs with 강아지 which means puppy. One reason for this is that 개 sounds more formal and 강아지 is more casual. The word 개 is also used in lots of swear words (and I’ve learned them all after teaching in Korean schools for years).

We won’t be teaching you the swear words, but we will teach you some words related to the word dog.

Let’s start!

멍멍 (meong-meong) = In English, we think a dog sounds like “woof woof”. In Korean, it’s 멍멍.

멍멍이 (meong-meong-i) = This is a cute way to refer to puppies and dogs in general and is mostly used by babies and younger kids. You will often hear parents say this to this kids and point to a dog to get their kids to look and see a cute pup walking by.

Different breeds

Most of these are just Konglish versions of the English names for dog breeds

불도그 = Bulldog

푸들 = Poodle

달마티안 = Dalmation

콜리 = Collie

비숑 프리제 = Bichon frise

진도개 = Jindo. This dog is a breed unique to Korea (Jindo Island)