Lesson 28 (Beginner 2A L4): Beginning Chapter 7 with the Weather and One Class of Irregular Verbs
May 16, 2020•1,357 words
We finished chapter 6 and started on chapter 7 today. For chapter 6, all that was left was really the pronunciation, and then the self-check.
There will be a word (vocab) quiz next week. Perhaps it means that the vocab quiz will always be one week after we start a new chapter?
So today's post will have a lot of the vocabulary, from the chapter 7 list. We also covered the first grammar point, and it's interesting because this cleared up a question I had while doing exercises on Duolingo. (This is one of the reasons I don't like Duolingo.)
The title of chapter 7 is: 날씨가 어떻습니까? It means "How is the weather?" and uses the formal speech conjugation. Obviously, this chapter will be about the weather and also formal speech.
In informal speech, you can ask the question as: 날씨가 어때요?
Pronunciation
This chapter's pronunciation rule is about the pronunciation of ㅎ.
Specifically, when ㅎ is the initial consonant in a syllable*, it is pronunced normally. However, if it is the final consonant (batchim), and the next syllable starts with ㅇ, the ㅎ becomes slient.
For example, 좋아요 is pronounced as [조아요].
I kind of knew this before this was mentioned, but not as an explicit rule.
This applies also to syllable blocks with 4 letters which have ㅎ.
For example, 많아요 is prononuced [마나요]. This combines with the other pronunciation rule that if the next syllable starts with ㅇ, the batchim is carried over covered in Lesson 14's post.
*I think it's not just initial consonant in a syllable, but also in a word (or compound word), because there are cases such as in 전화번호, although not explicitly a rule, is pronounced more like [전화버노], with the ㅎ in 호 disappearing almost completely...
Vocabulary
| Korean | English | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 날씨 | weather | |
| 덥다 | to be hot | only used for weather |
| 뜨겁다 | to be hot | e.g. food, drink |
| 춥다 | to be cold | only used for weather |
| 차갑다 | to be cold | e.g. food, drink |
| 따뜻하다 | to be warm | This has a positive connotation, such as it's warm in cold weather. If you find it's warm and uncomfortable, the correct adjective is 덥다 (to be hot). |
| 시원하다 | to be cool | |
| 맑다 | to be clear (sunny) | 좋다 can also be used to describe good weather. |
| 흐리다 | to be cloudy | |
| 바람이 불다 | to be windy | lit. wind to blow |
| 비가 오다 | to be rainy | lit. rain to come |
| 눈이 오다 | to be snowy | lit. snow to come |
| 계절 | season | Sino-Korean word from 季節 (季节) |
| 봄 | spring | |
| 여름 | summer | |
| 가을 | autumn | |
| 겨울 | winter | |
| 가볍다 | to be light | weight |
| 무겁다 | to be heavy | |
| 쉽다 | to be easy | Careful with present tense (informal) conjugation: 쉬워요. It sounds like 쉬어요 (rest). The 워 sound has to be distinctive. |
| 어렵다 | to be difficult | |
| 맵다 | to be spicy | |
| 가깝다 | to be near | |
| 요즘 | these days | recently, nowadays |
| 단풍 | autumn foilage | refers to the leaves that are red/orange/yellow in colour |
| 꽃 | flower | |
| 수영장 | swimming pool | |
| 바다 | sea | |
| 산 | mountain | |
| 생선 | fish | This refers to fish that you buy in the supermarket for eating, i.e. dead fish (seafood) |
| 물고기 | fish | This refers to fish that are alive and well, e.g. your pet fish, the ones that swim in an aquarium or in the ocean. It's sort of ironic because it literally means "water meat", but this is not to describe the fish that is eaten, whereas words like 돼지 고기, 닭고기 are pork and chicken (meat) for eating |
| 이야기하다 | to talk | 이야기 means "story", so this is literally to share a story. |
| 입다 | to wear | |
| 아주 | very | e.g. 아주 더워요. (It's very hot.) |
| 조금 | a little | e.g. 조금 어려어요. (It's a little difficult.) |
Grammar
From this chapter onwards, we will start to look at some exceptions in terms of conjugation, that is, irregular verbs, starting with this first rule.
1. 'ㅂ' 불규칙
When some verbs or adjectives end in the final consonant 'ㅂ' are followed by a vowel (i.e. the next syllable begins with 'ㅇ'), 'ㅂ' changes to '우'.
The teacher says that verbs are very rare, 99.9% of the time, this rule applies to adjectives.
This is why it is 더워요 and 추워요, even though the infinitive forms are 덥다 and 춥다.
We had encountered 더워요 and 추워요 back in the foundation class when learning the Korean alphabet. Later, when we went on to learn the present tense conjugation in Lesson 12, and how 배우다 conjugates to 배워요, I thought 더워요 had the infinitive form of 더우다 (and similarly, 추우다 for 추워요).
This was why I was stumped with my Duolingo exercises. The thing about Duolingo is it generally uses the formal conjugation (하십시오체) instead of (해요체). So in the lesson on adjectives, I was scratching my head as to why it was ...춥습니다. We had not (and still have not, but will in this chapter) learnt about conjugating to the formal form, though we encountered a few "stock" phrases/sentences with it before. My cursory research told me this form has the —ᆸ니다 ending. But I was sure that it should only be the 습니다 part, so where did the other ㅂ (in 춥) come from? And it turns out... it's part of the infinitive form all along.
(To be clear, I'm using the term "infinitive" rather loosely, since 춥다 is an adjective. But as I mentioned before, adjectives seem to be in "verb" form, as evidenced from their translations, e.g. 춥다 is "to be cold" and not just "cold". This is just my mental model of all this, which, as I've just shown above, can be completely wrong.)
Let's look at some examples of this rule with different conjugations:
- 가볍다 (to be light): 가벼워요 (is light)
- 무겁다 (to be heavy): 무거워요 (is heavy)
- 맵다 (to be spicy): 매웠어요 (was spicy)
- 덥다 (to be hot): 덥고 (hot and...)
- *입다 (to wear): 입어요
For 입다 (to wear), it is 입어요 (not 이워요) in the present tense. The rule does not apply. This is because it is a verb, and, in most cases, this rule does not apply to verbs.
It's important to realise that 'ㅂ' changes to '우' when the next syllable starts with 'ㅇ' as there will be many new grammar forms to attach it too.
In the last exercise we did, the teacher gave us some grammar parts(?) that we mostly did not know and asked us to combine them based on this rule, using 덥다.
- 덥다 + 어요 = 더워요
- 덥다 + (으)ㄴ = 더운 (으 is removed)
- 덥다 + 어서 = 더워서
- 덥다 + (으)면 = 더우면
- 덥다 + (으)ㄹ 거예요 = 더울 거예요
- 덥다 + 습니다 = 덥습니다
- 덥다 + 지만 = 덥지만
In bold are the ones that we have learnt or are going to learn soon. The others I have no clue what they are.
In this chapter, we will learn the last two in the list. The last one we will learn next week (it's the second grammar point of this chapter) - but I did use it in my writing assignment homework for last week since it was useful. It's the construction for connecting contrasting clauses, i.e. "but". But... that is for the next post, next week.