110 Learning Journal 8

[Are Oelsner - 아리]

During this week I learned about the number system in Korea and how to talk about time. Korea actually has a very complex number system, or two be accurate, has two different number systems that are used for different purposes and occasionally together. Korea has its own traditional number system that only really works for small numbers, but Koreans also use a chinese-based number system for larger numbers. When doing things like talking about your age, counting things, or stating the hour you would use the traditional Korean number system, but if you wanted to talk about money or even the minutes in the hour you would use the chinese based number system. Even though you count things in the traditional number system, when you start counting above one hundred the part of the number that is at and above one hundred becomes the chinese based number, while the smaller part stays traditional. The reason that the time system is so complicated in Korea is because in the past people couldn't tell time more accurately than the hour so there was no word for minutes, but with the creation of clocks people needed words for more accurate times, and at around the same time the Chinese based number system was becoming more widely used so people used it for the number of minutes.