Lesson 41 (Beginner 3A Lesson 1): New Term, New Chapter

It's a new term but there's no one who left or joined. The teacher was in school today, so I wonder if she will be there from now on, since this breaks the pattern.

This lesson was on 15 August, which is also Korea's National Liberation Day. Since it's a public holiday that falls on a Saturday, the teacher asked us if we get Monday off when Saturday is a public holiday. We said that it depends on the company that you work for.

(I'm not sure if it's more of a converation starter than her not really knowing, because I'm sure she's been living here for years.)

Then she asked about if the public holiday falls on a Sunday. We said that yes, it will be a holiday. (Concidentally enough, the week before was Singapore's National Day - 9 August fell on a Sunday this year, and so Monday was a holiday.)

The teacher said that in Korea generally if the holiday falls on a Sunday, there is no extra rest day given on Monday, with the exception of 3 holidays:

1. Lunar New Year (설날)
2. Mid-Autumn Festival/Korean Thanksgiving Day (추석)
3. Children's Day (어린이날) - on 5 May

Children's Day isn't a public holiday for us, only for the students. But it is a public holiday in Korea for everyone. I think we had this discussion some time back about this.

So every year, she says that the Koreans will check the calendar and see if it's a "lucky" year in terms of the day of the week that the holidays fall on.

We finished up Chapter 10 in the textbook, and started with some vocab for Chapter 11 (only on the body parts, and not the sickness/symptoms-related words, so I won't be including those until we cover them next week even though I have the Quizlet deck with them in).

Grammar

The grammar points were completed last week with the completion of the handout, but since we are covering some of them again as they appear in textbook, I wanted to note for V-아서/어서 that the 서 is optional in spoken language.

Instead of:

• 쿠키을 만들어서 줬어요. (I made cookies and gave them.)

You can also say:

• 쿠키을 만들어 줬어요. (I made cookies and gave them.)

Culture Note

The culture note in this chapter is about the opening hours of various institutions in Korea.

1. Bank - Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm. Closed on weekends. Most office workers who need to use the bank services will use their lunch hour, according to the teacher.
2. Post office - Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm. Closed on weekends as well.
3. Immigation office - Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm and half day on Saturday: 9am to 1pm

We didn't really have in-depth discussion about this, but the teacher noted that she also noticed that the banks here have different opening times depending on their location (e.g. whether they are standalone or in a shopping mall).

Pronunciation

The pronunciation topic this time is that after the final consonants (받침) ㅂ or ㄷ, if the initial consonants of the next syllable are any of: ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅈ, then they are pronounced as the double conosant versions: ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ.

The first thing to remember is that the final consonant ㄷ is the one with many possible "variants": 앋, 앗, 앚, 앛, 앝, 앟. (These were the 6 that the teacher listed, but I guess 았 as well?)

The other thing is ㄱ, ㄷ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㅈ looks like a pretty long list, but it's really only those consonants that have a double consonant version, so it's not nearly as hard to remember. By now it's pretty intuitive which consonants can "double up" to make the double consonants.

Examples:

1. 몇 시[멷씨]
2. 밥도 [밥또]
3. 삼십 분[삼십뿐]

I have a feeling that we have sort of been told this for isolated cases before, but it's not been generalised into a rule.

I went to dig, and found something from Lesson 30... Only to realise that it's kind of different to this rule due to my mistake.

The textbook was consistent. While I wrote my own example from my understanding:

• 만났습니다: [만나씁니다]

The textbook's examples from back in Chapter 7 were (consistent with this pronunciation rule):

• 춥습니다 [춥씀니다]
• 어떻습니까 [어떧씀니까]

I think in that chapter there was more focus on how it's [씀] instead of [습] - that is, the /m/ sound - and so it wasn't something I paid much attention to. After all, I have to admit that I can't always tell the difference between ㅅ and ㅆ. It's very possible that while trying to copy down whatever the teacher wrote, I copied down the wrong thing (I have caught myself doing that many times before, when reviewing). Or it could have been my wrong interpretation of something she said.

Vocabulary

Some miscellaneous things related to body parts (it's not as bad as it sounds... am I the only one thinking of dead bodies when someone says "body parts" instead of "parts of the body"?) when we went through this:

1. There is a song called 눈,코,입. The teacher played only the line where he sings this, so I don't have much context of the whole song but I think it's about someone remembering their previous love.
2. Korean mothers play this 코코코 game with their kids to teach them the various parts of the face. 코 means nose, so you start by going 코, 코, 코,... and tapping on your nose each time you say it. Supposedly both the mother and the kid does it, since the teacher made all of us do it. Then she would say another body part and point somewhere else, e.g. 입 (mouth) but point to her ear. Then we, as the kid/learner, are supposed to still point to the correct body part (mouth) and not to the ear.
3. There is a Korean version of the "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" song: 머리 어깨 무릎 발. Yes, it's called almost the same thing: Head, Shoulder, Knee, Foot. The second round was really too fast to sing along to in class.

Finally, a note on differentiating 팔 (arm) and 발 (foot), particularly in the sentences 팔이 아파요 and 발이 아파요.

1. 팔이 아파요: Emphasis is on the consonant sound ㅍ. It results in a downward intonation.
2. 발이 아파요: Emphasis is on the vowel sound 아. It results in an upward intonation.