My Redbubble

Friday, June 22, 2007

A little Korean

Korean, as you may know by now, is one of the languages that I have (maybe brashly) chosen to learn. One question I get is"How do you read those weird characters?". Well, Korean writing is much easier than Chinese in that Koreans use an alphabet, while Chinese use individual characters to represent sounds or ideas. While the picture 龍 means dragon in Chinese, in korean it is 용 [ㅇ(silent) + ㅛ(YO) + ㅇ(NG) = 용 Yong, which is Dragon in Korean. So when you make a character in Korean, you simply put 2 to 4 letters together to make a character. I inlcuded a chart to give an example of what some letters are. Here are some basic phrases for anyone who's interested:
안녕하세요=an nyeong ha se yo= Hello, How are you, good morning/afternoon/evening
안녕히계세요= an nyeong hi gye se yo= Good bye (You say to person your leaving)
안녕히가세요=an nyeong hi ga se yo= Good bye ( Say to person who's leaving)
감사함니다= kam sa ham ni da= Thank you

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