KoreanClass101.com Blog

Mistranslation. Okay, so a little linguistics never hurt anyone. A transference error is when something gets lost in the translation (think old Jackie Chan movies). This superbly hilarious phenomenon is not exclusive to Korean-English, English-Korean but it still is pretty funny nonetheless. One of my favorites is the whole "our mom" situation. 우리 어머니 is a way of saying "that mother in this context", "our mother" or "the mother that we both know". But when you look at it, even a newbie can be thrown off by the context. "What? Our mother? Dude, that's MY mother!" Good stuff. Why do you know my mom, man? :) How exactly is she your mom, too? Why don't we have "our" everything? This is one of those things that just doesn't translate... Show more

While I was helping teach at an elementary school, I noticed the kids said 멍미 a lot. I asked the English teachers and she said she didn't know what it meant. I thought maybe I was pronouncing it wrong or something, but later one of the students I tutor said it too, he was in 6th grade and when I asked him what it meant, he said it was 'secret language' and that it meant just "what?!" . I don't exactly know what it translates to, because he used it often and sometimes I think saying "what" in some situations wouldn't quite make sense. but while I was in 서울 he high school kids used what they called "secret language" too. I think it's more like slang though. Some other words that I learned were the slang words for elementary student, middle... Show more

Hotels. Korea has got to be best place to immerse yourself in the culture. Where else can you knock on someone's door and ask to stay the night? Oh, and not get shot trying to do so? Well of course Korea has hotels. Big ones. Expensive ones, but we don't want to talk about that. Those are no fun. And overpriced. They offer a high quality product with a high quality product price that is to be expected in any major city or country. But thankfully, Korea has other options that have more character and are definitely something unique that most visitors are hard pressed to find elsewhere. Regardless of where you stay, as long as you can hold your own without blushing from Western embarrassment, you can almost always talk down the... Show more

What I noticed about the fashion in Korea was that most of the women wore high heeled shoes. The students, however, wore tennis shoes, preferably some ridiculously expensive brand name such as Le Coque, Adidas, Nike, or puma. I never saw a student wearing high heeled shoes. Also the students uniforms are usually altered. The girls that I lived (중삼) with told me that they gave their skirts to the launderer and asked them to shorten them, because only losers wear their skirts long, according to them. As for the boy's fashion, there was one boy who had one pant-leg shortened and rolled up partway, but when I asked about it, I was told it was just his own fashion. Boys in Korea are also more conscious of how they look, one other foreigner... Show more

UPDATE: The migration is complete. Thanks for your patience and support. Should you come cross any issues, please report them here. It's time for scheduled maintenance at KoreanClass101.com. On Sunday, July 13th at 9am EST, KoreanClass101.com will go down for several hours. When it returns, there may be a few small quirks which will be ironed out ASAP. What can you expect when the sites go live again? Well, most of the changes are "under the hood" so you probably won't be able to appreciate them fully right away (you will soon). What you will get right away is: 1. A new and improved vocabulary flashcards with audio that are more intuitive and easy to use. 2. A new sample sentence expansion section with audio in the Learning... Show more