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Remember when you were a kid, and was always fascinated with buses? Every kid is fascinated with those big wheels, and spacious aisles. Well in this lesson, we’ll relive those memories as we go out for a picnic in Korea with Keith and Seol! And of course we’ll be taking the bus in Korea. In this Picture Video Vocab lesson, we’re going to bring all the essential Korean vocabulary and phrases that come with riding the bus in Korea. So remember to watch our lesson.

And remember, our Premium users get a review track so that when we’re riding the bus, we can practice saying those words in Korean! And don’t forget to stop by KoreanClass101.com and leave us a comment!

Speak



This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 6:30 pm and is filed under Picture Video Vocab . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

33 Responses to “Picture Video Vocab #6 - The Bus”

KoreanClass101.com says:

여러분, 한국의 버스는 여러분 나라의 버스와 비슷해요? 많이 달라요? ^^
(Everyone, are the buses in Korea similar to the buses in your country? Or are they very different?)

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Austin (오민) says:

와!!!! 1111번! 매일 타는 버스이에요!!!!

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theresa says:

same! but we’ve got bendy buses and double decks. haha.
we also have security cameras on buses. very singaporean.

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Jacqueline (쟈클린) says:

몰라 :mrgreen:

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Jacqueline (쟈클린) says:

I don’t know if it just me but sometimes i’ve noticed that these words are pronouced like this:
미안해 => 비안해
누구=> 두구

:???: i’m confused, that’s how those words have been sounding to me lately when i hear it in a drama or radio or elsewhere ^^:???:

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james says:

I’ve brought that up before Jacqueline. You’ll never win! :roll:

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Shan says:

Jacqueline: yeah, been brought up before. You’re definitely not the only one who hears them pronounced this way :smile:

I’m impressed that people automatically give up seats to older people. This respect for elders thing is really something that’s deeply ingrained in Korean thinking/culture/behaviour. Not that we don’t do it in Singapore, but generally, people are not always willing to do so. Some pretend to fall asleep once they see an old person or pregnant lady board the bus/train (really!). :mad:

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Hyunwoo Sun(선현우) says:

Yeah the difference between the sounds “ㅁ” and “ㅂ” is sometimes subtle… :) But you’ll often know from the context which one is which :)

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Hyunwoo Sun(선현우) says:

Jacqueline, Shan, James, I hope this little video will help :)

http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=O4bvafQsNnM

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Daniel K says:

“Dynamic” Korean buses… Maybe the Korean Tourism Organization should use that in their future promotional materials. :mrgreen: Riding those buses is really like going to an amusement park. No need for Everland!

This past weekend I took the bus for the first time without any Korean helping me. (I take the subway and walk anywhere I need, usually.) I thought I was doing well: I wanted to go to 용산역, and it said 용산역 on the side of the bus. When I got on, I confirmed with the driver that the bus was going to 용산역. But, when I checked the map, it didn’t say it went to 용산역! It went in a big circle, and none of the stops said 용산역. We got off near 신용산역 instead. Luckily the two stations are in easy walking distance!

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emily (holdfast) says:

keith, i think you are right in calling it a handle. ^^

i’ve never ridden a bus/train with individual handles, just handrails. i’ve never ridden a bus in america, either, only in the u.k.

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james says:

The ㅂ/ㅁ, ㄴ/ㄷ issue is a bit frustrating for me. I could write a paper on this (someday I will!). Originally I wanted confirmation from other non-Koreans regarding the sounds of these consonants in the initial consonant postition more specifically the question word 뭐 sounding like ‘buo’. The response I got was something along the lines of ‘I totally hear ‘muo’ every time. :evil: I don’t know how else to clean/stuff my ears to NOT discriminate between these sounds. I was ready to give up on this until a Korean teacher wrote on a message board that some Koreans cannot distinguish between the voiceless and voiced ㅂ. For example, the ㅂs in 가방 and 보다 sound TOTALLY different. This gave me a sliver of hope :cry: (Hehe, I’m so invested in this!)

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james says:

Hmm. My ‘rant’ about ㅁ/ㅂ ㄴ/ㄷ didn’t go through. It’s probably for the best. :mrgreen: 현우 씨 thanks for taking the time to make a video regarding this but I’m afraid I’m not assuaged. Mainly because you used the voiced and voiceless ㅂ in the video interchangeably (seemingly to me). I will try to make a video response to, hopefullly (fingers and toes crossed), clear this up. This is emotional for me, just kidding.

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Shan says:

현우 씨, thanks for making that video! But I must agree with James that it’s not that we don’t know the difference between the ㅂ/ㅁ, ㄴ/ㄷsounds. We do, but we hear them pronounced differently. “뭐” often sounds like “뿨”, and “누구” often sounds like “뚜구”. And often when you ask native Korean-speakers about it, they can’t really explain why it sounds that way to us. My guess is that the way those consonant sounds are pronounced in Korean are different from the way they are pronounced in English. So a “ㄴ” is not necessarily the equivalent of the english “n” sound…

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Hyunwoo Sun(선현우) says:

Yeah :) James, Shan, I agree that one video / audio cannot explain everything. Hehe :D

As you know, ㄴ in Korean is pronounced with the tongue in the same position as the ‘th’ in English, not just touching the back of the upper teeth :)

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Hyunwoo Sun(선현우) says:

But maybe, the similarity in the sounds of ‘m’ and ‘b’ is universal. A lot of Korean people find it hard to distinguish between ‘maybe’ and ‘baby’ too :)

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maxiewawa says:

James, I know how you feel. I’ve asked Korean speakers about it and I think it’s just one of those things that they don’t realise they do. I’ve asked people about the word for “rice/food”. “Pub” they say. But in a sentence, it’s “pummogo”. But when I try to pick them up on it, they insist that there’s no change. I guess they don’t realise they’re doing it.

I asked a question similar to yours on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ndjmcpqoaw

And I got a really helpful answer from another youtuber here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbtb5PZ9u14&watch_response

Korean doesn’t use the nasal block that is often used in English. Try saying “mwo?” with a blocked nose or “nugu?” holding your nose and you’ll see why they come out as “bwo?” and “dugu?”

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Jacqueline (쟈클린) says:

Hyunwoo, thanks for making a video about that. Really appreciate your effort in trying to teach us :smile:

I understood the difference you gave between those words, that’s how i’ve been pronuncing it , but the problem is that those words are pronounced very often like we mentioned before ^^.

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Shan says:

Max - I saw that video, and the explanation he gave was helpful in explaining the sound of the consonant when it is in the final position of a syllable block.

But when the consonant is in the initial position, as James brought up, there is no reason for the pronunciation to “change” from “muo” to “buo”, or from “nu gu” to “du gu”. It’s just one of those things about the Korean language that is elusive to non-native speakers…:???:

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Hyunwoo Sun(선현우) says:

Jacqueline, Shan, yeah.. it’s still very tricky :) I guess one solution to this problem is to know more and more vocab, since there’s no word that goes ‘두구’ or ‘붜’ in Korean (maybe that’s why I can tell the difference - a word and a random sound, at least for the examples given above). Context will help clarify the vagueness, I hope ^^

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Jacqueline (쟈클린) says:

Here’s an example of what we say ^^, a the beginning of this mv there’s a phone conversation and I think the girl says like 3 times 미안 (Sorry) but she pronounces it 비안 ^^.

Here it is :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u0ClsGDdkQ

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Hyunwoo Sun(선현우) says:

:shock:

Haha. :D Jacqueline, yeah it DOES sound like 비안해 :D Had it not been for the fact that there’s no word like 비안해 in Korean, I would have had to wonder which one it is, too :D

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Hyunwoo Sun(선현우) says:

And it’s a very nice music video by the way!

Is there any specific vowel that seems to make this happen more often, among ㅏ, ㅑ,ㅓ,ㅕ,ㅗ,ㅛ,ㅜ,ㅠ,ㅡ,ㅣ ?

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Shan says:

Yes, “미안해” is another one of those that very often sounds like “비안해” to me.

Another one is the simple “네”. Sometimes I hear “데”.

We should make a list of these words! :grin:

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Sam says:

I found an interesting article about this that offers at least one explanation for the change from ㅁ to ㅂ (and presumably from ㄴ to ㄷ). It suggests it happens especially with the “high vowels” (where the soft palate is elevated) ie. ㅜ, ㅣ, and, although possibly to a lesser extent, ㅔ. The article suggests that this occurs because the nasal “voicing” of consonants such as ㄴ and ㅁ is naturally done with the soft palate in a lower position (ie. easier with vowels such as ㅏ and ㅓ), thus producing more of a stop when attempted with the ‘high vowels’. But I’ve gotten used to this sound (”did he say ‘데?’”), think of it as natural, and even try to imitate it :smile:

http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/phonlab/users/ohala/papers/SEOUL3-emergent_stops.pdf

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Austin (오민) says:

Way back in college I took a really interesting psycho-linguistics class. One day the prof showed us a video of someone repeating a simple sounds.. maybe /b/ and /p/…I forget exactly.. I’ll try to track down the video and post it here, but anyway the audio had mistakenly been switched around, so the video shows the man speaking one sound, but the audio is of a different sound. I think the result was a third sound!!

All this to show that sometimes the visual clues of the lips forming the sound are just as important as the audio. I’ll dig around for that video later today.

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Austin (오민) says:

I found it! It’s called the McGurk effect:

http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html

The video is of a man saying “ga”
But the audio track was of him saying “ba” (it came from a different video)

Put the two together, and something really strange happened. If you watch the video with no sound, you can perceive a “ga” If you close your eyes and only listen to the audio, you’ll hear “ba” But if you watch the video with the sound on, your brain perceives it as “da!”

Fun, huh?! I wonder if something similar is going on in a non-native speakers perception of these sounds in Korean.

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james says:

오민, Interesting but it didn’t fool me for one second and I only read the description of the effect afterwards. Maybe because ‘ba’ is so common in my mother tongue. Even my brothers weren’t ‘tricked’.

Maxiewawa, you nailed it with the nasal block thing. Also, Korean speakers don’t seem to be aware of the changes in consonant sounds with regards to position, at least not all the time. And that’s okay. I commented as ‘himasf’ to that video response when it was posted ‘coz I didn’t agree with some of his wording.

Sam, great find! Thanks for sharing that.

Thanks everyone for the input. I didn’t mean to hijack this thread :oops: but I’m so happy to put this to rest :mrgreen:

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Jeff (Javis) says:

I think I would call those free-hanging, individual “handles” on the bus hand-holds. The buses in DC only have handrails along the ceiling, though. Also the “손잡이” on escalators and stairs are called handrails.

That’s interesting about ㄴ/ㄷ and ㅂ/ㅁ. I can’t recall having troubling hearing the difference, but I have been told on occasion that my pronunciation of ㄴ is too close to ㄷ. I bet it has to do with Hyunwoo’s point about the point of articulation in my mouth as I pronounce the consonant not being correct.

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Chris says:

I originally heard “v” for ㅁ, but I knew it couldn’t be correct.

The ng-r combination is not uncommon in my native language, so I found it easy to say, but r->n makes a lot of sense as they’re both nasals. ^^

The buses here are about the same, I guess, but not fast at all. Drivers aren’t really that aggressive here (well, we’ve only got single files in the cities). But do Koreans consider the fare pricey? I’m just curious, because if I change it to my currancy, it’s ridiculously little.

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Daniel K says:

Wow, really cool video, Austin! I was tripped up by the “ga”/”ba” change. But when I watched and listened to the video, I heard “ga,” not “da.” I guess I’m in that 2%!

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Ed says:

^bump.

There’s a famous paper from 1975 that addressed this very problem, and may answer many of the questions posed in this thread. It’s a bit technical, but it has a really nice discussion about this issue.

It’s called “Denasalization in Korean” and it’s in:

Ferguson, C.A., L.M. Hyman, and J.J. Ohala, eds. 1975. Nasalfest: Papers from a symposium on Nasals and Nasalization. Stanford University, Special Publications, Project on Language Universals.

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isomu says:

Hang on! The bus or tram sway “handle” (in English) is a “strap;” the rider, a “straphanger.” http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/strap-hang

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