Lesson 47 (Beginner 3A Lesson 7): End Chapter 12

I received the notes for chapters 13-15, including a revision sheet for the test which will be after chapter 13, and the answer sheet for the test. The next test is from chapters 9-13. Given that typically it's about 3 weeks to complete a chapter, I should expect the test in about a month. Time really flies, doesn't it?

Today's lesson was mostly on finishing up chapter 12 in the textbook, since in the last lesson we'd already covered the grammar in the handout. So we did the speaking, listening, and reading exercises, as well as the culture note and pronunciation topic which I will cover since those are new.

The student who used to sit in the dark wasn't here again. I really should take note of how often they skip. I really wonder how they can manage because even though I'm going for class and doing some (albeit minimal) revision on Anki I get lost, like at the start of the lesson when the questions being asked are freestyle questions.

For the last 10 minutes, we started with the vocabulary for chapter 13, which is on transportation.

This post is written before I do my homework (unlike the usual) because this week's homework involves writing (no worksheet) and also giving a call to the teacher to practise oral. :/ (It's a defined exercise but still... making phone calls to other people make me nervous. Doubly so if it's to an authority figure like a teacher. Triply so if it's in a foreign language.)

Listening

I'm making a note here that phone numbers are hard.

This is probably more of a culture note, but for 1 and 2 in phone numbers, some Koreans may opt to use the native numbers (though that is strictly not correct) because it makes it much clearer. For the Sino-Korean numbers, 1 (일) and 2 (이) sound much too similar that it can also be a challenge for native speakers to differentiate. By contrast, 하나 and 둘 are very distinct.

Culture Note

The culture note was about emergency numbers in Korea. Or more specifically, the numbers to call if some sort of incident happens.

If a burglar broke in, or if there's a car accident, you should call the police at 112.

If a fire broke out, or your friend is really sick, then you should call 119 for the fire service or the ambulance.

The teacher mentioned that there are other numbers such as 111, 114, and 120.

She said 111 is for reporting suspected North Korean spies (if I understood correctly). Like, if you had a colleague that you suspected was a North Korean spy or something, you'd call that.

114 is a phone service, used more in the past when there wasn't Internet available everywhere. If you wanted to know the number of say a particular eatery, you would call them to ask what the number of the eatery is and they would tell you.

I'm not sure what 120 is for, the teacher didn't mention in class. A quick search gave this site which says:

Seoul Dasan Call Centre: Information related to services provided by the City of Seoul

Sounds like 114? I have no idea what's the difference, is this 120 something specific to Seoul?

Pronunciation

The pronunciation topic for the chapter was on the pronunciation for 못, which was also discussed last week.

It mentions 3 rules:

1. 못[몯] + ㄱ,ㄷ,ㅂ,ㅅ,ㅈ → [몯] + [ㄲ], [ㄸ], [ㅃ], [ㅆ], [ㅉ]. (That is, with single consonants with a double consonant counterpart, the sound is of the double consonant)
2. 못[몯] + ㄴ,ㅁ → [몬] + [ㄴ],[ㅁ]. (We covered this last week, where it becomes [몬].)
3. 못[몯] + ㅎ → [모] + [ㅌ] (Nothing new here, this was covered in chapter 11, see Lesson 44 where the pronunciation of ㅎ was mentioned.)

Last week, we mentioned another rule with 못[몯] + ㅇ but here because 못 is simply taken to be pronounced as [몯] as a premise, it's not mentioned.

Vocabulary