Korean Job Discussion Forums

rapier · Joined: 16 Feb 2003

Thanks canuck- i didn't think i was wrong either. This just confirms my observation: every expat teacher has is own peculiar version of "korean".

Korean definitely does have way more syllables. Just think of basic commonly used verbs. Inevitably the score is always something like English 1, korean 3. Its so unfair...
Work= "Il-ha-da"
Shout= "So-ri-chi-da"
live= "san-da"

stalinsdad · Joined: 25 Jan 2003 Location: Jeonju

I laugh that a friend of mine says; that she speaks excellent Korean and my Korean girlfriend can't understand a word she says!!
Sure I'm touchy, my Korean is basic, I need to put in more effort but that's because I intend to stay here. Those who are here for a year(if they last that long) can learn if they want to, but they will not be given copius amounts of job offers in US/Oz/Britain if they can speak Korean. As for teaching, well my experience has told me that if you use even a small amount of Korean, the students expect and will automatically go into Korean speaking mode!! Funny that Koreans are the poorest speakers of English in asia, especially as they spend so much. I guess it must be all those English lessons in Korean. Shocked

FierceInvalid · Joined: 16 Mar 2003

The Great Wall of Whiner · Joined: 24 Jan 2003 Location: Middle Land

canuck wrote:

Canuck · Joined: 05 Apr 2003

Oh no! I made a typo! Well shoot me now, great wall of bitch caught my typo.

wormholes101 · Joined: 11 Mar 2003

Gord · Joined: 25 Feb 2003

bignate · Joined: 30 Apr 2003 Location: Hell's Ditch

Mike, the alphabet is easy to learn and Forest is right the vowel combinations can be a pain.

But, do yourself a favour if you do go to Korea, forget these yahoos and get yourself a real-Korean speaker, because these guys are just too interested in one uping each other. Laughing

"NO I speak better ("sh8ttier") korean than you!"
"NO I speak Better ("sh8ttier") Korean than you, and MY GIRLFREIND says so!) Razz

In the words of the Good Bobster - Maaaaaae-Roeng! Razz

Gord · Joined: 25 Feb 2003

gang ah jee · Joined: 14 Jan 2003 Location: city of paper

Canuck

Rapier was trying to show that Korean words have many more syllables than English ones. Glossing 'annyeong haseyo' as 'hi' may be correct, but IMO not as correct or even honest as 'hello' or 'good morning', 'good afternoon', etc. Also IMO 'annyeong' is a better approximation of 'Hi.'

Perhaps I should have been clearer. It wasn't that I thought rapier was wrong as such, just that his examples weren't completely representative. Take the word 'and' for example. you could gloss it as the compound word 'kurigo' in some cases (say, when starting a sentence.) In other cases 'mit,' '-wa/-gwa,' '-hago', '-go' would be appropriate depending on context, formality, type of word being modified etc. These words aren't hard to use because they're long. They're hard to use because the rules governing their usage are complex.

yeah, my asking him how long he'd been here was a bit juvenile, i agree with that.

Wormholes

i see your point that 'ga' is the root word and everything else is dependent prefix, infix and suffixes. I'm not sure how that makes it any less of a word than any other compound word. Take the so-called 'longest word in English' for example -'antidisestablishmentarianism'. only 'establish' is able to exist as an independent word and everything else is a dependent morpheme. My example is a word than can also be a sentence, but is a word nonetheless - apart from 'ga' (and possibly 'deuro') it can't be broken down into smaller segments of independ