The Month of May in Korea is often called Family Month. There's Children's Day, Parent's Day, and Teacher's Day. Korea takes Mother's Day to a whole different level! On these days you give your Children, Parents and Teachers gifts to show them how much you appreciate them. Children often benefit the most with candy and money being popular gifts. Teachers get quite a lot of gifts as well as they have many students and parents to receive gifts from. And that's why the month of May is called Family month in Korea! Well... did you learn something new about Korea? If you did, you'll be glad to know that you'll learn cultural tidbits in every single lesson at KoreanClass101.com! In every lesson, not only will you learn Korean that will... Show more

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

I'm sure you are all aware that 띄어쓰기(spacing) in Korean is just as important as in any other language (with the exception of Japanese and Chinese where spacing isn't necessary). I'd like to introduce some of the most commonly mentioned examples of the confusion that spacing errors can bring about. ^_^ The first one. Let's say you want to write, "My father is going into the room." - father = 아버지 - room = 방 - to go into = 들어가시다 (honorific) So this becomes 아버지가 방에 들어가십니다. But if you change the spacing a little bit and write, it becomes "아버지 가방에 들어가십니다." (My father is going into the bag.) Haha. And here's another interesting example :) Let's say you want to say "I bought a tree... Show more

Here's another very interesting 간판(store signboard) I found in Seoul, Korea. If you have any interest at all about Japan, you've probably heard of Shinjuku, a major commercial center of Tokyo, Japan. And since Japan and Korea are physically so close, you can say that EVERYBODY in Korea has heard of the name "Shinjuku" or 신주쿠, as it's written in 한글(hangul). But this store cleverly used that fact in making a not-easy-to-forget store name. Before you look at the store name, please look at the pictures below. This is 쭈꾸미(jjukkumi), a kind of octopus, but a smaller kind. 쭈꾸미 is cooked many ways, but mostly with host pepper sauce (고추장) and it's made to be really spicy hot and chewy at the same time. Great taste, and allegedly very... Show more

Hi everyone. Back with another Korean 간판(signboard). This is not "funny" but very interesting. I live just across the street from my university so it's very convenient whenever I receive a last-minute phone call to cancel an appointment and also when I want to meet someone around school. One day, a friend of mine from Australia called me and asked, "Do you want to have lunch together?" So I said, "Yes, where shall we meet? Where do you want to go?" So she said that she wanted to go to "김네" but I had never heard of such place near my university so I asked her back, "김네? (wondering what it could mean) Where is it? I don't think I know the place." She sounded surprised that I didn't know this place because it was... Show more