Formality Levels with Regard to Proposals

Both intimacy and respect are highly valued in Korean culture. Different styles of proposal verbs and sentence endings are appropriate in Korean for different settings and audiences. 존댓말 (chon-daet-mal) is the polite level used for general courtesy, in formal social settings, news reports, and the like. 반말 (pan-mal) is a casual level used between good friends, an adult talking to someone considerably younger, etc. A new friend sometimes requests permission before using 반말.

There are four levels of formality for Korean proposals.

Formal (존댓말)

1. 합시다 (hap-si-da)
2. 해요 (hae-yo)

Informal (반말)

1. 해 (hae)
2. 하자 (ha-ja)

Let's go to that store:

그	ku (that)
가게	ka-ge (store)
에	eh (to)
가다	ka-da (to go)

Formal

1. 그 가게에 갑시다. (ku ka-ge-eh kap-si-da)
2. 그 가게에 가요. (ku ka-ge-eh ka-yo)

Informal

1. 그 가게에 개. (ku ka-ge-eh kae)
2. 그 가게에 가자. (ku ka-ge-eh ka-ja)

• The 합시다 style is mostly used among adults who are about the same age and are familiar with one another.
• The 요 ending might be used for gentle suggestions such as 같이 가요 (let's go together) to one the speaker doesn't know well. (Use the very polite form 같이 가세요 ka-chi ka-se-yo when speaking with someone much older.)
• The slightly less formal 하자 style is often used in place of the 해 form, perhaps because 해 sounds more like a command.

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Remember that even though 존댓말 and 반말 are often referred to as the "polite" and "casual" styles, in reality neither style is necessarily always polite or not polite. The formal style can seem distant when used with a friend and is in fact used when people quarrel. And an inappropriately casual style in a formal situation can be perceived as impolite.

History of the Korean Alphabet

Until the mid-15th century, literacy in the the Korean kingdom was limited to the intellectual elite, who communicated in Chinese. The invention of the alphabet transformed Korea with the introduction of literacy to ordinary citizens.

The Annals of King Sejong (as he is referred to posthumously) state that the king personally created the letters of the alphabet during the 25th year of his reign. Due to differences of opinion regarding the date calculation, no one knows whether the alphabet was created specifically in 1443 or 1444. However, due to the interest of Sejong in the written language, Korean has one of the few alphabets with births that can be traced so accurately to a particular time.

Regardless of the 1443/44 question, the script was made known to the world in 1446, with the publication of a treatise on the principles of the new writing system by a group of scholars from the Academy of Worthies commissioned by Sejong, attached to the Junmin chongum, written by Sejong himself. South Korea celebrates Alphabet Day on October 9, an approximation of the lunar date of promulgation of these documents.

While said annals proclaim that Sejong personally invented the alphabet, it is the opinion of some modern scholars that the credit is due to advisors commissioned with the task, and that Sejong, in his wisdom, either conceived of or was convinced of the potential value of the undertaking. It is worth noting, however, that no other grand creations or accomplishments were credited to kings of that era. In other words, it was not customary in South Korea at the time to attribute achievements of a monarch's scholars or staff to the king personally. Additionally, scholarly review of the evidence has convincingly argued that the project could not have been a collaboration, and that firsthand accounts document the king's intellect, learning, and detailed knowledge of orthography and phonology. For these reasons, most scholars continue to believe that Sejong himself played the principal role in the invention and development of the alphabet, laboring in isolation on the project even as he managed affairs of state.

Phrases for beginners #2

In the last post, we began dissecting our first phrase:

How are you?
안녕하세요?
an-nyeong ha-se-yo?

You'll remember that the phrase above begins with the syllable 안 (or an, pronounced like the syllable hon in honest. This syllable comprises three "letters" or characters: ㅇ + ㅏ + ㄴ. The ㅇ is silent, ㅏ is pronounced like the o in got, and ㄴ is the equivalent of the English n. The characters are combined in a clockwise fashion, beginning with the upper-left character followed by a character "on the right" and terminating with a character "on the bottom." The result is 안 an.

We also went over the next syllable 녕 (nyeong, pronounced like nyoung). It begins with ㄴ, followed by a new vowel ㅕ(eo, pronounced like the ou in young), and followed by ㅇ, pronounced as a trailing ng when it is the ending character of the syllable.

These two syllables formed our first Korean word: 안녕 an-nyeong, which means hello or goodbye.

The next word is 하세요 (ha-se-yo, polite form of the verb 하다 hada, which means to do. The first syllable 하, begins with ㅎ, pronounced like the English h, and 아, which we learned earlier. So the first syllable is pronounced like the ho in hot.

The next syllable 세 begins with the letter ㅅ, the equivalent of the English letter S, followed by another new vowel ㅔ, pronounced in a manner similar to the beginning of the diphthong ai in main.

The final syllable 요 follows a different form. The syllables we've seen so far consisted of characters combined in a clockwise fashion, beginning with an upper-left character followed by a character "on the right" and terminating with a character "on the bottom." Syllables such as 요 are formed by just an initial character above a final character. You will learn to quickly recognize the two forms during your studies. In this example, the syllable begins with a silent ㅇ and ends with ㅛ yo, pronounced more like the Spanish o than the English o, sort of between aw and o.

We have now covered our first Korean phrase: 안녕하세요? Don't worry about the literal translation. Just think of it as the standard, polite way to say hello in Korean.

ㅎ
ㅏ
ㅅ
ㅔ
ㅇ
ㅛ

Phrases for beginners #1

The Korean alphabet, as complex as it looks, is really quite simple. Perhaps the most pleasing aspect of written Korean is that -- as opposed to English -- there is almost always only one way to pronounce a written word, and just one way to write what you might already know how to pronounce. The written alphabet was designed that way intentionally, during a project commissioned by Sejong the Great, fourth king of the Choson dynasty. Although the written language might appear to be complicated, there are only 14 consonants and 6 vowels.

Let's parse our first phrase:

How are you?
안녕하세요?
an-nyong ha-se-yo?

Each Korean syllable is formed by one vowel and one or two consonants. For example, the phrase above begins with the syllable 안 (or an, pronounced like the syllable hon in honest. This syllable comprises three "letters" or characters: ㅇ + ㅏ + ㄴ. This demonstrates how Korean characters are combined into syllables. The ㅇ, which is silent in our example, is combined with ㅏ, which is pronounced like the o in got, to form 아. Since the ㅇ is silent, this 아 is again pronounced like the o in got. Next, we add the consonant ㄴ, which is the equivalent of the English n. The result is 안 an.

This demonstrates the particular sequence of Korean characters within a typical syllable. This syllable begins with an initial consonant, in our case the silent ㅇ, followed by a vertical vowel (ㅏ) and a trailing consonant (ㄴ). Voilà: 안. (By the way, voilà defined literally means "see there" in French. Stick around, I'm a fountain of useless knowledge!)

You might say that the characters are combined in a clockwise fashion, beginning with the upper-left character followed by a character "on the right" and terminating with a character "on the bottom."

Now for our next syllable 녕 (nyong): For lack of a similar syllable in English, I'll just say that the yong portion is pronounced like young in English, preceded by an n: nyong. We form the syllable following the rules I described in the previous paragraph: We begin with ㄴ, which as we already know is pronounced like the English n, followed by a new vowel ㅕ(yo, pronounced like the yu in yummy).

Next we append the ㅇ, which we learned earlier. However, I'm sorry to say that you'll have to remember that whereas ㅇ is silent when it's the initial character in a syllable, it is pronounced as a trailing ng when it is the ending character of the syllable. It's one of the only unusual aspects of the written language that you'll have to memorize.

We have now combined the characters ㄴ, ㅕ, and ㅇ(n, yo, and ng into our second syllable, which is pronounced nyong. We have formed our first Korean word: 안녕 an-nyong, which means peace! On that note, I'll wrap this up for now. We will continue with this lesson with my next post.

Recommended reading: Korean/Alphabet (WikiBooks)

Korean Keyboard (Windows 7)

To use the Windows 7 Korean keyboard:

Click the Start Button
Click Control Panel
Click Region and Language
Click the Keyboards and Languages tab
Click Change Keyboards
On the Text Services and Input Languages dialog, click Add
Expand the + next to Korea

Expand the + next to keyboard

Check Korean
Click Okay

Windows will now display a language bar that will allow you to select an input language:


Click EN to switch to Korean:


Click Soft Keyboard. An on-screen keyboard will appear:


You can also access the virtual keyboard by typing On-Screen Keyboard in the Windows Search box, or via the Control Panel's Ease of Access Center.

Enter Korean characters by typing on the virtual keyboard. You can also write Korean characters without the On-Screen Keyboard. See this about.com article: How to write korean using my computer?