While Rooster continues to play Sleeping Beauty, Orchid and Liz attend another enjoyable Korean language class. They share with you their adventures and misadventures with the language in MYK4! We had two teachers in class that day. One was the original 선생님 (if you don’t know what this means, you’d have to backtrack to the first article of the series) and another was a 선생님-in-training who was there to observe the session. Omo, two Teachers in one class? Give us a break already . (Yesss, I’m sure I used “Omo” correctly here, pats self on the back). It’s “bit” not “bich” Teacher (the original one) started off the class with the five final consonants of ㅋ, ㅍ, ㅌ, ㅊ and ㅎ and the pronunciation when the alphabets appear at the end of a word. Teacher: You pronounce the word like the original consonant it is “birthed” from. For instance, 엌. Just remember that ㅋ (kh) is derived from ㄱ (g/k), thus you pronounce the word as if it was written 억 (eok). Thus: ㅍ = ㅂ –> 앞 = 압 (ap)also ㅌ = ㄷ = ㅅ = ㅈ = ㅊ = ㅆ = ㅎ –> 낱 = 낟 = 낫…and

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Orchid and Liz brave the heavy rain and traffic jam (while Rooster zonks out in bed) to reach class 15-minutes late and share with you their adventures and misadventures with the Korean language in MYK 3! “When” and “Yesterday” We were at our 3rd Korean language class and have yet to complete learning all the Hangeul consonants and vowels. We started the class with the four vowels combinations, which were 애, 에, 얘 and 예. While going through words that utilised the vowels, we learned some new words. Teacher: 어제 (eo-je) means yesterday. But many of my students mix up 어제 with 언제 (eon-je), which is the word “when”. Just remember that 언제 has that extra ㄴ = n. Watch = clock Then Teacher moved on to the next word, which was 시계 (shi-ge). My study notes showed a picture of a clock beside the word. While looking at my spanking new watch, which was a Christmas present, Teacher asked: 시계 있어요? (shi-ge isseoyo?) Which I understood to be “Do you have a clock?” I answered 없어요 (oep-seo-yo = don’t have). But 선생님 kept giving me this strange look, so I went: Liz: Does 시계 mean watch as well?Teacher: 네,

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Orchid and Liz continue with their Korean lessons (yes, Rooster still naps) and share with you their adventures and misadventures with the language in MYK 2! Wow, we did a lot in the 2nd lesson and there was even an additional student in class. Now, the grand total of students in our Korean language class is SIX. Among other things, we continued to learn about final consonants (batchim), aspirated consonants (ㅋ, ㅍ, ㅌ,ㅊ, ㅎ), as well as asking simple questions such as 뭐예요? (mwo-ye-yo = What is this?), 누구예요 (noo-goo-ye-yo = Who is this?) and 어디예요? (eo-di-ye-yo = Where is this?). We also ran through 있어요 (iss-eo-yo = there is/have), 없어요 (eop-seo-yo = there isn’t/don’t have) and since we learnt 좋아해요 (joh-ah-hae-yo = like) last week, Teacher taught us the difference between 좋아해요 and 좋아요 (joh-ah-yo = good, fine). 포크 & 나이프 While learning to ask questions, we learnt two new words – 포크 (po-keu) and 나이프 (nai-peu). Teacher asked us to guess what they were. Can you? (take a few seconds here, if you don’t already know). We drew a blank so she went: Teacher: 포크 is fork and 나이프 is knife. For Koreans, we pronounce each syllable of

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Orchid and Liz learns Korean (while Rooster enjoys a siesta?)! In this Mind Your Korean (MYK) series, we’ll share with you our adventures and misadventures with the language. We’ve signed up for a Korean language Beginners course because I’m sick and tired of banging my head against the wall in frustration when I’m unable to “decipher” a Korean article. To our utter delight, we enjoyed ourselves tremendously in our very first class. After poking fun, criticising and laughing at some Korean stars’ English, such as Rain unintentionally using the “F-word” in one of his songs and saying “lide with me” in Freeway; or Se7en singing Baby, you is all I need, I figured it’s about time the Korean stars (if they do read our blog) get a laugh or two at our expense ;-P. So here’s a peek at some of the more interesting occurrences during our struggle with the language. Our Teacher, a native Korean who speaks English and a smattering of Bahasa Malaysia(!) and Mandarin(!!), announced that she will gradually use only Korean in class. Sweet. Then, she asked us why we were learning the language. Liz: I want to read Korean (entertainment) news and translate it into

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