Silence 침묵

Our feeble attempt to learn Korean is coming on apace. Our vocab. is nearly into double figures. We nailed 'thank you' and 'hello', 'hi' and 'how are you?' (both formal and informal) early on. Then things went a bit slow.

We knew the number 3, because that's 'sam'. Which amuses the children. The Korean for 'quickly' came soon enough, when having to tell the children to hurry back from the bathroom. And 'here?' or 'here!' soon followed, as the children use it all the time. Then things pretty much dried up all together.

Today we've jumped forward, with my favourite so far 'silence' (pronounced - tim-mu), which I will use a lot in class. Also got 'left', 'right' and 'straight', for use when directing a taxi back home after a night on the town.

Korean is so difficult. They are not very tolerant of even slight mispronouciation. You are sure you are saying the right thing and they look at you blankly. Then they click and repeat back at you what you are sure you've been repeatedly saying at them for the last 10 minutes, uintil you are blue in the face. You repeat back at them EXACTLY what they just said, and the shake their head and say THE VERY SAME BLOODY THING back at you. You can carry this on forever, it can drive you ever so slightly mad at times.