Lesson 14 (Beginner 1A L6)

In this lesson, we finished chapter 3, and started on chapter 4 in the last half an hour.

We continued practising making sentences about what you are doing (오늘/지금 뭐 해요?) - both today and right now. Naturally, all of our answers to 지금 뭐 해요? ("What are you doing right now?") was some variant of 한국어 학교에서 한국어를 배워요. (I'm learning Korean at the Korean language school.) Some omitted the location (like I did), but others included it, with the actual name of the school.

As for what I'm doing after (그리고 뭐 해요?), I said 집에서 숙제를 해요. (I'm going to do homework at home.)

Which is true, because I always do my Korean homework after class and then forget about it for a week. I know one of my classmates always does it in the morning before our class in the afternoon.

Culture Note

The last thing in chapter 3 was the culture note section. First, we talked about what we do in our rooms (방).

Then, it talks about place names formed by adding 방. I've added these to the vocabulary list below, although they aren't strictly in the "official" list.

(An aside on how I compile the vocabulary list: They come from the handouts and the Quizlet cards from the school [which, together, cover everything in the textbook's list], and any other vocab words that we encounter in class. I would count the words in the former as the "official" list.)

Pronunciation

Chapter 3's pronunciation (발음) topic was about how when a next syllable starts with the silent ㅇ, the final consonant from the previous syllable is shifted to the initial position.

I may not have mentioned this in detail, as the first time I learnt this was in one of the foundation classes (the first 8). However, I did mention this rule briefly in Lesson 11 when talking about pronouncing syllables with 4 letters.

As a simple example, if you had something like 직업 (job), it's pronounced as [지겁].

This rule also applies to syllables that are not part of the same word. For example, consider: 저는 미국 사람이에요 (I am American). The 사람이에요 part is pronounced as [사라미에요].

Grammar

1. Indicating Location: 여기가 N이에요/예요.

This is the first grammar point in this chapter. According to the handout, there will be 4.

여기가 N이에요/예요 is used when asking questions and making statements about the current place where the speaker is located.

이에요/예요 depends on the noun N, whether it has batchim or not. 이에요 is used when the preceding noun has batchim, and 예요 when it does not. (We've covered this before.)

• 여기 is used for a place where both the speaker and listener is close to.
• 거기 is used for a place that is close to the listener but far from the speaker (still within sight) OR a place that is not in sight
• 저기 is used for a place that is relatively far from both the speaker and the listener, but still within sight.

This is similar to 이거는/그거는/저거는 N이에요/예요 (this/that/that over there is N). I covered this when summarising Lessons 1-10 in my very first post.

What I didn't mention then (since it was a summary) was that this distinction reminded me of how it's done in Japanese the very first time I saw it.

For indicating things, you would use これ (ko-re) for something close to both the speaker and listener (like 이거 is used in Korean), それ (so-re) for something near to speaker but far from the listener (like 그거 in Korean), and あれ (a-re) for something that is far from both (equivalent to 저거).

For places, this is ここ (ko-ko), そこ (so-ko) and あそこ (a-so-ko). And we have 여기, 거기, and 저기 as their Korean counterparts.

Now, I have forgotten most of my Japanese (apart from how to read Hiragana and Katakana and some basic phrases), but somehow I remembered these things.

I have no idea why.

Vocabulary

Places

Positions

For 사이, if you have an object between 2 objects that are the same thing (such as 2 boxes, 박스), then you can say 박스사이. If the object is between 2 different objects, say 박스 and 의자, then you will use 하고 ("and" for nouns) to join them: 박스하고 의자사이.

The textbook doesn't go into detail on how to use these (in the pages that we covered today), but the homework handout has some examples (actually questions, which initially confused me, because I only knew 있어요 to mean "have").

So this is a teaser of grammar point 2 for chapter 4. This is how (I think) you say "The box is on the desk": 박스는 책상 위에 있어요.

Others