During the two weeks of spring break, I did not meet with my language partner due to the chaotic time. However, I did spend a lot of time reviewing Hangul, subject particles, and common phrases I had learned before break which I mentioned in previous posts. In order to keep learning, I did some research on good Youtubers that teach Korean. I tried a couple Youtubers but found Korean Unnie to be the easiest to follow for me. Therefore, for the break, I started watching her videos on demonstrative adjectives such as “this” and “that” These are basic words that I feel like I use all the time in English but don’t really realize it. I remember learning these formally for Spanish so I was reminded about this concept. I found it to be much easier than when I learned it through Spanish since there aren’t differences in ways to say it based upon gender. I wanted to learn this because it’s something I can practice on my own. By that I mean, if I see something, I try my best to describe my surroundings in my own head or out loud if i’m not in public (so I don’t seem crazy) to say things like “that bag” or “this pen”, etc.
From what I learned, there are 3 ways to denote distance: 이, 그, and 저. They are related to distance from the speaker and listener. So 이 (i) is used when the thing is the closest to the speaker. For example, using 이, you can say 이 머리(i meo-ri) which means “this hair.” Another example is 이 쿠(i ko), which means “this nose.” It’s pretty simple since you just need to place it in front of the things you want to talk about. What is used a lot in Korean that Korean Unnie mentioned was “이 거"(i geo) which means this thing and “이 곳"(i got) which means this place. I remember when learning the endings 이에요 (ieyo)/ 예요 (yeyo) with my language partner, Jannette, we did examples using “이 거"(i geo) such as 물이에요(I-geo mul-i-e-yo) which means this is water. It’s so exciting to see the things in the past we learned come together as I was learning where “this thing” comes from exactly and how to apply it to other scenarios .
Next, 그(geu) is used when the thing is a little far from the speaker or close to the listener. For example, using 이, you can say 그 종이(geu joeong i) which means “that paper.” Lastly, 저(jeo) is used when the thing is really far from both the speaker and listener. For example, using 저(jeo), you can say 저 종 이((jeo joeong i) which means “that paper.” Further, I learned that you can’t use the 이, 그, and 저 on their own which is very different from English because we say “this” or “that” and point to something all the time. This makes sense why the phrase “이 거"(i geo) is used so often.
Something that confuses me is as I was trying to combine these with topic particles, it wasn’t as I expected by just adding the topic particle at the end of my topic. In korean, the demonstrative adjectives are actually contracted. Therefore an example would be 이건(i geon) instead of 이것은(i geon eun) which I expected when used in a sentence. Typically contracted forms are more common. With subject particles there is also a contraction. This complicates these basics I have learned so far. For now, I still think this was very fun to learn because now I can use them all the time to describe my surroundings. It has also forced me to learn more Korean vocabulary for common things I see so I can describe more items around me or on me. This was not something in my learning plan but just something I decided to pick up on the whim because it would be useful and that didn’t seem so daunting to try on my own. As I dive deeper into the little things of the language, it seems to get more and more complicated. However, I am trying to ignore all the little rules and look at the bigger picture and learn the most useful things for now.
If anyone is interested, this the video that helped me learn the demonstrative adjectives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ugU8uGkV5I
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