KOREAN

37

Vocabulary

Nouns:

고속도로 = highway

스님 = Buddhist monk

당국 = authorities

도시락 = lunch box

여행자 = traveler

피해 = damage (입다)

성형 = plastic surgery

연휴 = continuous holidays

Verbs:

도약하다 = jump

깜빡하다 = forget

빨다 = suck

뜨다 = to open one's eyes

감다 = to close one's eyes

다투다 = to fight verbally (verbal argmt)

겨루다 = compete/fight/vie for

발전하다 = develop(ment)

흥분하다 = to excite/arouse

개설하다 = establish/open/start

Passive Verbs:

떠지다 = to have one's eyes open

감기다 = to have one's eyes closed

Adjectives:

설레이다 = heart beating fast

Adverbs and Other Words:

왜냐하면 = because

그래서 = therefore

때때로= sometimes

최신(의) = the latest _______

진심(으로) = sincerely/truly/seriously

전반 = general

전반적으로 = generally

한편으로 = on the other hand

반면에 = on the other hand

For help memorizing these words, try using our Memrise tool.

Introduction

Okay, now it is time to get really serious. Up until now, you have not been taught how to say one of the most common words in the English language: "because." Its not that I didn't want to teach you this word, but rather that you didn't have the knowledge to fully understand this word up until this point. In Korean, because is not generally said as a word. Okay, that is slightly untrue. There is a word in Korean for "because": 왜냐하면. However, "왜냐하면" is not nearly used as much as the grammatical principle that has the meaning of "because" in Korean. For example, Korean people would never say something like this:

나는 밥을 먹는다 왜냐하면 배고팠어

In fact, that sentence makes no sense (I was trying to write it in a way that didn't make any sense).

You could technically write something like this:

나는 밥을 먹었어. 왜냐하면 나는 배고팠어 = I ate. Because I was hungry.

However, that wouldn't sound natural at all in Korean. Instead, (as I said) Korean people use a grammatical principle to have the meaning of "because." This grammatical principle is ~아/어서, which is added to verbs/adjectives at the one of a clause to connect it to the upcoming clause. We will talk about this principle in this lesson.