Lesson 16 (Beginner 1A L8)

For this final lesson, everyone was here, all 7 of us. I got to talk to 2 of my classmates on the way back, which I documented in the post before this.

The new person who joined has 4 (after this, 3) lessons more, so it seems like the school allows people to join in in the middle and count the term from there. I guess that having a fixed 8-lesson cycle for payment is more straightforward.

I was feeling vaguely irritated this class as I didn't have my pencil case and had to borrow a pen from a classmate. I didn't write in the textbook because I didn't want the ink to smudge. I had another class this morning and there was a test, I left my pencil case behind as I thought someone needed my eraser. We got a handout and I wrote on the back of that. All the mistakes... sigh.

The speaking practise in class was really on one point: the locations of things relative to others. We will be finishing up chapter 4 next week, though we finished the chapter 4 handout today.

Grammar

For the other grammar notes for this chapter, refer to the previous two lessons' posts.

4. N 앞 [뒤,옆,...]

This is the fourth and final grammar rule for this chapter.

This construct is used denote the position or location of someone or something (relative to something else).

For example, you place 앞 (meaning "in front of") after the noun that indicates the position. So 책상 앞에 means that you are talking about something that is in front of the desk. (에 is the position particle, learnt in the last lesson.)

By contrast, in English, the position indicator (for lack of a better term - if it has a name, it escapes me) comes before the noun. It's in front of the house. It's on the table. The hospital is behind the pharmacy. It's the same with French (L'hôpital est derrière la pharmacie) and German (Das Krankenhaus ist hinter der Apotheke).

For the full list of position words, refer to Lesson 14.

We practised first with positions of objects relative to each other, using a new (single sheet) handout, then moved on to places (locations), using the textbook.

The handout comes in 2 variants, A and B. A has items which B does not, so someone with the A sheet would ask someone with the B sheet where something is, and B will respond, and then vice versa.

Examples

1. 안경이 어디에 있어요? (Where are the glasses/spectacles?)
2. 안경은 책상 위에 있어요. (The glasses/spectacles are on the desk.)
   • You can omit the part about the glasses and just say: 책상 위에 있어요.
   • The 은 (or 는 if the preceding noun has no Batchim) particle in the answer is to indicate that the topic has previously been mentioned.
3. 병원이 은행하고 식당 사이에 있어요. (The clinic is between the bank and the restaurant.)

Vocabulary

These objects were positioned relative to something and came up either in the examples in the handout, or in the activity that we did in class.