Listening Exercise with Transcript #7: Tunak Tunak Tun!

Korean fundamentally lacks a few sounds. The fact that there is no distinction between the English "R" and "L" is a well-known fact. In addition to this, Korean does not have the rolling "R" of Italian or Spanish, it does not have the guttural "R" or nasal sounds of French, or the guttural "CH" of German. These words are fairly hard to approximate with the Korean language system. Despite this, Koreans realized that Korean is often excellent at approximating...

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#41. 청개구리 -- You little contrarian

Here's a short story that every Korean knows. It goes by the title "말안듣는 청개구리," or "the tree frog that never listened." This is a "청개구리," a species of frogs that you see often in Korea. The letter "청" means "green or blue (depending on context)," and in this case, it means "green." You see it in "청바지 (blue jeans)" or "청와대 (blue-roofed house; the Korean white house)." Once upon a time, there lived a mother tree frog ("청개구리" meaning green frog)...

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#40. 호모나 게이득 -- A contradictory society

I find Korea to be a country full of contradictions. One of the things that I find to be the most strange is its attitude towards the same-sex relationships. Just like in any country, the younger people tend to be more open about the same-sex relationships, although many elder people will openly speak out against it. In any case, the Koreans tend to be a lot more conservative about it as a whole. Misinformation and prejudice is definitely present,...

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#39. 발암 -- It's killing me!

Here's an expression that I'm not a huge fan of, but it is used widely as of a couple of years ago. There's some degree of belief among the Koreans (although not nearly as widespread as fan death, I think!) that stress causes cancer. FYI, it seems that there's no real evidence that stress causes cancer at the moment. Anyway, if you frequent the Korean internet, you will undoubtedly see a lot of stress-inducing users. Some of them are so blinded by their own convictions that they refuse to have a conversation, preferring to more or less resort...

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#38. Knowing your internet literature

Today, I was browsing the Korean websites as usual, when I came across the following post (which I re-create below for the ease of reading.) Title: 놀이공원이 없는 마을에서 (In a village that has no amusement parks) Text (very short): 이장님이 허락한 아이들의 유일한 마약 (The only drug that the mayor allowed the children to access) Accompanying gif: A lot of posts in Korean internet forums are very short, like this one. They are intended for a quick chuckle (or a quick...

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#37. 동공지진 -- Oh, Sh!t

Have you ever had that experience, where you know you screwed up, and you have no idea how to get yourself out of the situation? You're embarrassed, you feel terrible, you want to apologize but you're not sure how things will go from there, and there doesn't seem to be much else that you can do. You're stuck and you know it. And you can't bring yourself to make eye contact with anyone. So you carefully control your gaze, but of course, that means...

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#36. 부심 -- Be proud of who you are (but don't be overly so)

If you have spent any time in Korea, or if you have any friends who identify culturally with Korea, you might have noticed that they are pretty humble about their achievements. This probably stems from the culture of putting the community first before yourself, and it is one of the most intricate aspects of the Korean culture that I cannot explain in a single post. The Koreans react more strongly even to what we call humblebrag (where people pretend...

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