Last week, we had a class about counting in Korean. The day before our lesson, in SDLC 105, Esme talked about it as well, so before the actual lesson, I had a quick review of the counting system. In class, Jenna talked more about the differences between Sino-Korean and Korean numbers in detail. Sino-Korean was derived from Chinese characters, so they have similar pronunciation to the counting system we are using now in China. Sino-Korean is used for dates, money, time, addresses, and also numbers over 100. On the other hand, Korean numbers are used for age, the minute in time, and counters for counting objects. There are words for multiples for tens in Korean numbers up to 90. Thus, the biggest number we can represent with Korean numbers is 99, and hence we have to use Sino-Korean for numbers greater than that. We also learned about the numbers in currency, which are usually large numbers such as one thousand and ten thousand in Korean. It is interesting to notice that while English has thousand, million, and billion, Korean and Chinese has thousand, ten thousand, and ten million. We did some practice on writing down the dates and times with different systems of counting.
This week, we went to the Pan-Asian Dinner at the dining hall together for our cultural outings. We explored various food from different countries in Asia, such as China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Japan. I was indeed surprised by the quality and variety of food provided at the dining hall that night. We couldn’t find many kinds of Korean food, but I did find some Korean/Japanese snacks, such as the 호두빵(hodu-gwaja) that I tried for the first time. I enjoyed the food at the dining hall that night and would like to experience this type of thing again. I’m glad that the International Center is trying to make the campus aware of other cultures on campus, and I hope they will keep doing it.
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