Since the last biweekly journal, I have had one session with Jenna and another with Jimin. On February 20th, I joined a group that Jimin taught and learned a lesson on Korean idioms. She explained to us that they were different than the proverbs we previously learned because proverbs are sayings people say while idioms are phrases that have a meaning of its own that is different than the direct meaning of the individual words that make up the phrase. Jimin would write each phrase on the white board and we would all read them out loud together. I thought it was interesting that most of the idioms mentioned body parts such as the eyes, nose, or hands within the phrase. I was able to recognize more idioms than proverbs. One that stood out to me was “손이 크다” which directly translates to “hands are big” but actually means to be generous or to over prepare for an occasion. My mom would use this one very often and people would use this idiom to describe her. Many of the idioms we went over focused on describing the personality of a person while the English idioms I am familiar with tend to describe situations and how a person acts. Similar to the proverbs, I thought that the direct meaning of the idioms were pretty funny, but unlike the idioms, the direct translations all made sense in a way. The idiom, 코가 납작해지다 directly means that one’s nose is being flattened but the actual meaning is to be shamed by someone or refers to one’s self confidence being lowered. I was able to guess several of the idioms right away. An example is 코가 높다 which directly means that someone’s nose is high. When I imagine that, I think of someone proud and it actually is used to describe someone who is arrogant.
The following Tuesday my group and my language partner Jenna watched a short Korean drama called “XX”. After watching two episodes, we discussed how different it was compared to other TV series in Korea. It was about how two people (one a head bartender and the other a owner of a bar) meet after ignoring each other for five years because one slept with the other’s boyfriend. The setting was unique and the problems that kept rising were fairly real which made this show more intriguing. Throughout the episodes, the idiom 바람 피우다 came up multiple times. It directly means to avoid the wind but really means to cheat on someone. I was excited to hear that phrase because I had just gone over common idioms five days before and I was learning how it was used in a sentence by watching the show. The subtitles were on, but I didn’t necessarily need them when the characters were talking. The only part I used the assistance was when they were discussing business and corporations. Watching the show also helped me practice listening because they were talking fast and I had to focus so that I could catch everything they said. Overall I thought I learned more about how native Korean speakers talk in their everyday lives using more complex phrases.
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