My days and time in quarantine all blend together making it hard for me to even know what of the week it is. Ironically, the focus of my studies recently has surrounded learning about time and the days of the week in Korean. In my original learning plan, I put that I wanted to learn about time so for this learning period I asked Jannette if we could go over how to say the date. In order to do this Jannette taught us the days of the week, how to count all the way to 100 (even though my original goal was only to count to 20), and how to say the months. I thought this might be helpful to learn just because I like knowing how to say the days of the week and basics like that. When I used to study German my German grandmother would call me every day to help me practice and I would have to say the date to her in German. I also thought this topic would be useful because every day has a date and I could practice each day.
Pri, Jannette, and I all joined a Zoom call to do our lesson. I love Zoom and am probably on it at least 12 hours every day so I was glad we could still meet. Zoom has really cool features and is great for teaching. Jannette made use of the whiteboard function to spell out the days of the week for us and even screen shared to show us things when we were confused or needed visuals. We started with learning the days of the week! The days of the week are not too hard to grasp since they all have the same ending with different beginnings. This reminded me of something I commented about in my previous bi-weekly language learning journal called word families. All of the days of the weekend in 요일 (yoil) and have different beginnings. The actual word for day is il (일). I listed them all below to make the common ending clear. Jannette introduced the words and I struggled with pronunciation for a bit (especially with Sunday because of the two rieuls - ㄹ). For continued practice, I found a really cool website where I could listen to a native speaker pronounce the word and then record myself saying it so I could compare my pronunciation directly to the recording (here’s the website: https://www.rocketlanguages.com/korean/time/days-of-the-week-in-korean). If I keep saying the days of the week each day I think (hope) that my pronunciation will improve.
Monday -월요일 - Wur-yoil
Tuesday - 화요일 - Hwa-yoil
Wednesday - 수요일 - Soo-yoil
Thursday - 목요일 - Mog-yoil
Friday - 금요일 - Geum-yoil
Saturday - 토요일 - To-yoil
Sunday - 일요일 - Ee-ryoil
After learning the days of the week we moved onto learning the months. The months are similar to the days in that they all end in the word for month, wol (월). However, this part really threw me off since there is no direct translation for the words January, February, March, etc. and instead you say the month by adding the number of the month to the word month. Essentially in Korean January is then “One month” and February is “Two month” and so on. I’ve listed the format below for reference. Differentiating between the pronunciation of January and February and November and December was a little harder as you can see from the similarities in their pronunciation (the only difference is the addition of rieul in the bottom of the first word in January and November). Here are the months:
January - 1월 (일월) - Eel-wol
February - 2월 (이월) - Ee-wol
March - 3월 (삼월) - Sam-wol
April - 4월 (사월) - Sa-wol
May - 5월 (오월) - Oh-wol
June - 6월 (유월 ) - Yu-wol
July - 7월 (칠월) - Chil-wol
August - 8월 (팔월) - Pal-wol
September - 9월 (구월) - Goo-wol
October - 10월 (시월) - Shi-wol
November - 11월 (십일월) - Shibeel-wol
December - 12월 (십이월) - Shibee-wol
The nice thing about the format of these months was that I learned how to say number 1 through 12 just from the months...or so I thought!
I had also taken French before and thought that would be the hardest numbers would ever be. If you’ve ever studied French you know that numbers can get very complicated and basically include math. Korean numbers are difficult when deciding which word for numbers to use. I’ll start with the set of numbers used to say the months. Here is how you count to ten:
1 - 일 - eel
2 - 이 - ee
3 - 삼 - sam
4 - 사 - sa
5 - 오 - o
6 - 육 - yook
7 - 칠 - chil
8 - 팔 - pal
9 - 구 - goo
10 - 십 - ship
As you can see these numbers are essentially the same numbers that are used in the months. Jannette explained to us how Korean uses two sets of numbers. One system (what we learned) is known as the “general number system” and has a wide variety of uses. It is also very easy to use since you only need to know 1 through 10 to count to 100. To count high numbers you can just build up the numbers. For example, if I wanted to say 30 I would say “three-ten” where thirty is “sam” and ten is “ship” (삼십 - samship). This was very fun to learn since it’s the fastest I’ve ever learned to count to 100 in any language (I spent an entire semester in Denmark and only learned how to count to 30 since it was so difficult).
The second number system is used for combining a number with an object-specific situation (e.g. counting the number of objects, people, or things). I don’t know as much about this system since we mostly focused on the other number system. I was a little discouraged by the two different systems and learning when to use which system. This was a humbling lesson since I was reminded of all the differences that I don’t know yet since I am not a native speaker and have never practiced my language in Korea.
The cultural aspect I tied into this was punctuality in Korea. I think time is a big part of culture as we discussed in SDLC 105 class near the beginning of the semester with the monochronic vs. polychronic cultures. After spending a semester in Denmark I know what a very punctual culture is like and on the opposite end of the spectrum, Spanish people are notorious for their flexible times. This made me wonder what punctuality is like in South Korea. I read on a couple of sources that South Koreans value punctuality and being late is a sign of disrespect. I found a cool website that compared punctuality around the world (http://www.mrgamez.com/punctuality/). It is essential to know these types of cultural expectations before traveling somewhere to not offend someone. Learning about time was really helpful although I am still wary about which number system to use. I’m very sad our semester is coming to an end and am excited for the last couple of weeks of SDLC. I can tell already I’m going to miss this class, Jannette, and Pri! :)
Replies