Sunday, February 22, 2009

뭐 라고요?

The problem with limited Korean vocabulary is that we tend to create weird expressions in a weak attempt to breach our vocabulary gap. Regardless of where we come from, being foreigners, we can understand quite well the weird expressions used by each other but I am not too sure about our teachers. Examples of such expression, which I can remember, are 주배장 and 싱싱한 빵.

주배장 is derived from 주차장 (car park) so it is not difficult to guess that 주배장 (ship park) means harbour. You would also not take too long to realise that 싱싱한 빵 means fresh bread. Since we are students, we could never get away without being corrected. Proper Korean for 주배장 is 항구 while 싱싱한 빵 is 갓 구운 빵 (갓 means just, 굽다 means to bake).

We always laughed when we blurted out some weird expressions. We knew that they are not right but lack of anything better, broken Korean is still useful to explain ourselves. It may sound like a paradox but I realise that sounding weird and broken is an effective way of learning Korean. Of course this is only valid if I am corrected at the end of the day.

A bakery in COEX. Daily New? A rather weird expression to describe bread.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for all the updates and the lovely photos. How I love winter! Have been enjoying your posts though I am going through a difficult time. Admire you for doing all the things that I would love to. Each time I tried to plan something, something will happen. Thus, I have decided not to think about it but to live each day at a time. Thot I just drop a post to let you know I have been reading all your updates.

    original time stamp: 23 February 2009 12:48

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  2. life is a challenge. be a warrior and give it a good fight :)

    original time stamp: 23 February 2009 19:31

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