Bi-Weekly Post #3

[Hyeon Jun Jo]

We looked at Korean idioms the past two weeks. It's always so fascinating to see how these complicated phrases were made with specific Chinese characters. After looking and studying so many idioms, I'm starting to recognize specific Chinese characters and its meaning. The thing about Korean phrases is that you can dissect the phrase by letters and you simply have to know the meaning of each Chinese characters to know the full meaning of the phrase it self. With my growing knowledge in Chinese characters, I can now look at a new phrase and come up with an educated guess of what it means. I keep a note to my self when I see a new letter and try to apply it when I see new phrases and I have about 50% chance to guess what it means which is a big improvement from knowing nothing about the use of Chinese characters in the Korean language. These phrases are hard to use in a real conversation and are only applicable in certain situations which is why it is so important to study many examples for each new phrase. There are many popular ones that are used often in Korean variety shows, and to know what they mean brings my journey in Korean learning to a new phase.