Learn about politeness levels and and how to drop aspects of speech
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| INTRODUCTION |
| Chunhong: 안녕하세요, 천홍입니다. |
| Iseul: 안녕하세요. 이슬입니다. |
| Keith: Keith here! Going Somewhere (Part III). All right. Today I’m joined in the studio by 천홍 and 이슬, and 설 has the week off. So Iseul and Chunhong are going to help me out with Beginner Lesson #11. Alright, today is the last of our series Going Somewhere. So Iseul, did you listen to the previous conversations? |
| Iseul: I have and I really wonder what kind of relationship these two have. |
| Keith: 천홍씨 what do you think? |
| Chunhong: 빨리 다음 장면을 보고 싶네요. |
| Keith: I want to listen to the next one, too. All right. So before we get into it, let’s do a little recap. Gyeong-hui and Steve, they met randomly on the subway and they’re old friends, or we think they’re old friends. Now, both of them have a date at CGV 극장. CGV Theater. So they both have a date at the same time, so they’re going together on the subway. So here’s the rest of the series. Let’s check it out. |
Lesson conversation |
|---|
| 영호 경희 안녕! |
| 경희 안녕! |
| 스티브 안녕하세요. 처음 뵙겠습니다. 저는 스티브입니다. |
| 영호 안녕하세요. 저는 영호예요. 저는 경희의 남자친구예요. |
| 스티브 그렇습니까? 저는 경희의 옛날 남자친구입니다. |
| 영호 어... 그래요? |
| 스티브 네. 그렇습니다. |
| 영호 왜... 같이... 있어요? |
| 스티브 여기에 데이트 약속이 있습니다. |
| 영호 흑흑... 엄마! |
| Seol: 한 번 더 천천히. |
| 영호 경희 안녕! |
| 경희 안녕! |
| 스티브 안녕하세요. 처음 뵙겠습니다. 저는 스티브입니다. |
| 영호 안녕하세요. 저는 영호예요. 저는 경희의 남자친구예요. |
| 스티브 그렇습니까? 저는 경희의 옛날 남자친구입니다. |
| 영호 어... 그래요? |
| 스티브 네. 그렇습니다. |
| 영호 왜... 같이... 있어요? |
| 스티브 여기에 데이트 약속이 있습니다. |
| 영호 흑흑... 엄마! |
| Seol: 영어로 한 번 더. |
| 영호 경희 안녕! |
| Iseul: Hey Gyeong-hui! |
| 경희 안녕! |
| Iseul: Hello! |
| 스티브 안녕하세요. 처음 뵙겠습니다. 저는 스티브입니다. |
| Iseul: Hello. Nice to meet you. I'm Steve |
| 영호 안녕하세요. 저는 영호예요. 저는 경희의 남자친구예요. |
| Iseul: Hello. I'm Yeong-ho. I'm Gyeong-hi's boyfriend |
| 스티브 그렇습니까? 저는 경희의 옛날 남자친구입니다. |
| Iseul: Is it so? I'm Gyeong-hui's ex-boyfriend |
| 영호 어... 그래요? |
| Iseul: Oh... Is that so? |
| 스티브 네. 그렇습니다. |
| Iseul: Yes it is. |
| 영호 왜... 같이... 있어요? |
| Iseul: Why... are you... together? |
| 스티브 여기에 데이트 약속이 있습니다. |
| Iseul: I have a date here. |
| 영호 흑흑... 엄마! |
| Iseul: Wa... mommy |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Keith: Iseul, what did you think of the conversation? |
| Iseul: Wow, it must be awkward, boyfriend, ex boyfriend meeting together. Never happened to me. |
| Chunhong: 용서가 안 되는데요. |
| Keith: Well, I think you can forgive him. He just didn’t know what he was saying exactly. It was just really ambiguous. That’s what it was. |
| Chunhong: I think Steve could say “I’m just friend.” |
| Keith: Yeah, he could have said but… |
| Iseul: Honestly, I’d rather have it straight and honest from the beginning. I think it was great that he said “I was her ex-boyfriend.” |
| Keith: Iseul likes it straight and honest. |
| Iseul: I do. |
| Keith: All right. Well, we’re going to go into the vocab real quick and then break down what happened in the conversation. All right. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| The first word we have is… |
| Chunhong: 안녕 |
| Keith: Hey or see yah! |
| Chunhong: 안녕 |
| Keith: Next we have… |
| Chunhong: 옛날 [natural native speed] |
| Keith: Past or old. |
| Chunhong:옛날 [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 옛날 [natural native speed]. |
| Keith: Next is… |
| Chunhong: 왜? |
| Keith: Why? |
| Chunhong: 왜? |
| Keith: And next we have… |
| Chunhong: 그렇다 [natural native speed] |
| Keith: To be so. |
| Chunhong: 그렇다 [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 그렇다 [natural native speed]. |
| Keith: And last we have… |
| Chunhong: 엄마 [natural native speed] |
| Keith: Mom. |
| Chunhong: 엄마 [slowly - broken down by syllable]. 엄마 [natural native speed]. |
Lesson focus |
| Keith: Let’s talk about these vocab words really quickly. The first one we have is… |
| Chunhong: 안녕? |
| Keith: And this is just a short casual way to say “hey, what’s up? Hey, how are you doing?” or it’s another way to say “bye!” “See you!” “Take it easy.” It’s really casual, really intimate. Do you use this a lot? |
| Chunhong: I use it a lot. |
| Iseul: Same here. |
| Keith: Yeah. This is part of everyday speech in Korea. But remember, this is in the intimate politeness level, so you can only use it with people that you are intimate with, people that you are very friendly with, or have a very close relationship with. All right. Next we have… |
| Chunhong: 옛날 |
| Keith: And this is “past” or “old”. In our conversation, what do we have? |
| Iseul: 옛날 남자친구 |
| Keith: So literally it’s “past boyfriend” or “old boyfriend”, but here we can translate it as “ex-boyfriend.” |
| Iseul: A lot of Korean folk stories start 옛날 옛날에. |
| Keith: Can we have that again, please? |
| Iseul: 옛날에. |
| Keith: Okay. If you want to break that down, we have 옛날, which is “old” or “past”, and then that’s followed by the time marking particle 에. Literally, it’s “past at”, “at the past” , but here we translate it as “a long time ago.” And just like Iseul said, there’s a lot of folk stories that start with 옛날에. Okay. Next we have…. |
| Chunhong: 그렇다. |
| Keith: And we went over one of the forms of this word in our previous lesson. We had 그래요? and this is in the standard politeness level. What’s the formal politeness level? |
| Iseul: 그렇습니다. |
| Keith: And the intimate politeness level? |
| Iseul: 그래. |
| Keith: Okay. So we have the formal… |
| Iseul: 그렇습니다. |
| Keith: The standard… |
| Chunhong: 그래요? |
| Keith: And the intimate. |
| Iseul: 그래? |
| Keith: And two of these were used in our conversation. All right, let’s talk about the conversation a little bit. Today’s focus is to briefly introduce the standard politeness level. Now so far we’ve been using the formal politeness level until now. We’ve been ending in 입니다. 입니다. 갑니다 and 갑니까?. And we’re still going to be going over the formal politeness level in our future lessons, but we’re going to be gradually, gradually trickling in a little bit a standard politeness level here and there. So today, 영호 is using all standard politeness level, and Steve is using formal politeness level. All right. So let’s have the first line. |
| Chunhong: 경희 안녕? |
| Keith: “Hey, Gyeong-hui! Hey, how are you?” And next is… |
| Iseul: 안녕? |
| Keith: Same thing here, “hey”. All right. The next line we have is very simple. |
| Chunhong: 안녕하세요? 처음 뵙겠습니다. 저는 스티브입니다. |
| Keith: “Hello! Nice to meet you! I’m Steve.” And the next line we have, we have something very similar except, remember, 영호 is using standard politeness level. So instead of 저는 영호입니다.. he says… |
| Iseul: 저는 영호에요. |
| Keith: Now this is the copula 입니다 in the standard politeness level. Can we have it one more time? |
| Iseul: 에요. |
| Keith: And it takes a different form sometimes, too, doesn’t it? What’s that other form? |
| Iseul: 이에요? |
| Keith: And this is, once again, if it’s adding on to a word that ends in a consonant or if it’s adding on to a word that ends in a vowel. Remember to check out that PDF. All right. Let’s go through this really quickly. Next is… |
| Iseul: 저는 경희의 남자친구에요. |
| Keith: “I Gyeong-hui’s boyfriend is” in the standard politeness level. “I’m Gyeong-hui’s boyfriend.” In our previous lesson, we had 남자친구 입니다. 남자친구 is. But here in the standard politeness level, it’s 남자친구에요. All right. Now we have Steve again who has the formal politeness level. |
| Chunhong: 그렇습니까? |
| Keith: And this is, “Is that so?” in the question form. |
| Chunhong: 저는 경희의 옛날 남자친구입니다. |
| Iseul: Wow, I wonder why he said that. |
| Keith: Well, he’s being honest. |
| Iseul: Well, he’s being honest, which I like but he has no consideration for how 영호 might feel. |
| Keith: Well, just in case our listeners didn’t catch that, this was in the formal politeness level. So it’s “I Gyeong-hui’s ex boyfriend is”, “I am an Gyeong-hui’s ex-boyfriend.” And remember, this is in the formal politeness level. Okay. Our next line we have is… |
| Iseul: 어, 그래요? |
| Keith: “Is that so?” Standard politeness level. Next we have… |
| Chunhong: 네, 그렇습니다. |
| Keith: That is so formal politeness level. Now let’s talk about the politeness levels a little bit. The formal politeness level is, well, formal. And sometimes because it’s so formal, it can be a little intimidating. |
| Iseul: Because formal politeness level can be intimidating. Maybe Steve’s using it on purpose to intimidate Yeong-ho. |
| Keith: I don’t know if he’s just doing it to be intimidating. Maybe he just knows the formal politeness level. But, yeah, here, because it is formal, sometimes it can be very intimidating. So that’s why Koreans use the standard politeness level a lot more. Once again, we’re going to be trickling in that standard politeness level. But we want everyone to know the formal, at least, to be as polite as possible. And then once you get the formal politeness level, everything else is a piece of cake. All right. So he says, “Yes, that is so.” Yeong-ho says, 어, 그래요? “Is that so?” And it’s just normal. But Steve, he says “네, 그렇습니다.” He’s like “Yes, that is so.” And that’s kind of intimidating. All right. Our next line we have is… |
| Iseul: 왜 같이 있어요? |
| Keith: Let’s break it down really quick. |
| Iseul: 왜 |
| Keith: “Why”… |
| Iseul: 같이 |
| Keith: “Together”… |
| Iseul: 있어요? |
| Keith: “Exist or is.” “Why are you together?” Next we have… |
| Chonhong: 여기에 데이트 약속이 있습니다. |
| Keith: Okay, let’s break this down really quickly. |
| Chonhong: 여기 |
| Keith: “Here”… |
| Chonhong: 에 |
| Keith: “At”… |
| Chonhong: 데이트 |
| Keith: “Date” |
| Chonhong: 약속 |
| Keith: “Promise” |
| Chonhong: 이 |
| Keith: Subject marking particle… |
| Chonhong: 있습니다. |
| Keith: “Exist, have.” But here, we’re missing a subject, and this is because Korean allows you to do so. You can drop the subject. What should it be? |
| Chonhong: 저는 여기에 데이트 약속이 있습니다. |
| Keith: “I have a date here.” |
| Iseul: Because that “I” is dropped, it’s very ambiguous as to who he’s on a date with. This is a perfect example as to why context is very important in Korean. |
| Keith: Yeah. And if Yeong-ho was on the train together with Gyeong-hui and Steve, he would know nothing’s happening, nothing’s going on, but because he wasn’t specific and he didn’t say “I have a date”, Yeong-ho misunderstood. He read the context wrong. He saw Steve and Gyeong-hui together and he assumed Steve was saying, “We have a date here together.” What would that be in Korean? |
| Chonhong: 우리 여기에 데이트 약속이 있습니다. |
| Keith: “We” have a date here. And that’s what Yeong-ho assumed and now they’re probably going to break up. |
| Iseul: Well, Yeong-ho was jumping to conclusions. Why would she go on a date with Steve to a place she already made a date with Yeong-ho? |
| Keith: I don’t know. |
| Iseul: Yeong-ho needs to calm down, take a breath. |
| Keith: Well, let’s just leave it at that because this is the end of the series anyway. |
| Iseul: Okay. |
| Keith: All right. And our last line is… |
| Iseul: 흑흑. 엄마. |
| Keith: And this “Mom” but this is a more intimate way of calling your mom. I think he needs to man up a little bit. |
| Iseul: Right. |
Outro |
| Keith: All right. Well, that’s going to do it for today. |
| Chonhong: 안녕! |
| Iseul: 안녕! |
Comments
Hide