5.4 Food and Drink — Epoché
What you will be able to do Name the staples, the main food categories, the drinks and the table things, and ask for any of them: 고기 주세요. and 물 좀 주세요. Say that you are hungry, that something is tasty and that something is too salty: 아주 맛있어요! and 이 국 너무 짜요. Use the two verbs for eating and drinking, and say why only one of them has a respectful form you will hear daily. Say why the Korean word for rice is also the word for a meal, and what follows from that for a learner. Order in a restaurant with nothing but a noun and one verb: 커피 주세요. Prerequisites : 5.3, which gave you the counters you need in order to ask for two of anything. You also want 3.6 Grammar , because asking whether a restaurant has something uses the verb for existence and nothing else. Food vocabulary is the most immediately useful in the course and the one a learner can practise every day without arranging anything. It is also the field where the corpus this course draws on is thinnest, as the syllabus predicted: some obvious words have no attested sentence at all, and rather than invent one this lesson leaves them out and says so. What is here is quoted, and several of the sentences are in the plain style rather than the polite style of this phase, because that is how the corpus records them. Word list Meals and staples Word Meaning Notes 밥 ko bap cooked rice; a meal Note for English speakers The two senses are one word, so asking whether somebody has eaten rice is asking whether they have eaten at all. It is the ordinary greeting between people who know each other. 음식 ko eumsik food Note for English speakers Food as a category, including a national cuisine. It is not used of a single dish, which takes the word from lesson 1.8. 식사 ko siksa a meal (formal) Note for English speakers Sino-Korean and more formal than the word for rice. With the verb for doing it means to dine. 고기 ko gogi meat Note for English speakers Also the second half of the word for fish, which is literally water-meat. English has no such pair. 생선 ko saengseon fish (as food) Note for English speakers Fish on a plate. A live fish in a river is a different word, which is the water-meat compound. 계란 ko gyeran an egg (Sino-Korean) Note for English speakers The word on a price list and in a shop. 달걀 ko dalgyal an egg (native) Note for English speakers The same thing, native Korean, and built from the words for chicken and egg. Both words are current and neither is wrong. 야채 ko yachae vegetables Note for English speakers A collective, so it takes no plural and is usually singular in Korean where English has a plural. 과일 ko gwail fruit Note for English speakers Also a collective. A single piece of fruit is counted with the general counter of lesson 3.11. Particular foods Word Meaning Notes 케이크 ko keikeu cake Note for English speakers A loanword. The Korean word for bread covers cake as well, so this one names the Western kind specifically. 바나나 ko banana banana Note for English speakers A loanword spelled by the rules of lesson 2.2, and one of the sixty transparent ones of lesson 2.1. 수박 ko subak watermelon Note for English speakers Native Korean. Its first syllable is the word for water, which makes the whole guessable once you know it. 치즈 ko chijeu cheese Note for English speakers A loanword, and the word Koreans say to a camera where English says the same thing for the same reason. 소금 ko sogeum salt Note for English speakers Native Korean. The adjective for salty in lesson 3.13 is unrelated in form. 설탕 ko seoltang sugar Note for English speakers Sino-Korean, though the first element is not the one you would expect, which is a good reminder that Sino-Korean words are not always transparent. Drinks Word Meaning Notes 술 ko sul alcohol, a drink Note for English speakers Covers every alcoholic drink, so the question of whether somebody drinks uses this word and no other. English has no single everyday noun for it. 소주 ko soju soju Note for English speakers The Korean distilled spirit. The word is Sino-Korean and its elements mean burnt liquor. 포도주 ko podoju wine Note for English speakers Literally grape liquor. The loanword of lesson 2.1 is commoner in restaurants, and both are understood. 마시다 ko masida to drink Note for English speakers Used of liquids only. When the verb for eating is used of a drink, as it often is, it is not a mistake but a wider usage. Eating out Word Meaning Notes 식당 ko sikdang a restaurant, a canteen Note for English speakers Covers anything from a university canteen to a good restaurant. The loanword for restaurant exists and sounds Western and expensive. 메뉴 ko menyu a menu Note for English speakers A loanword. Asking whether an English one exists uses the verb of lesson 3.6 and nothing else. 접시 ko jeopsi a plate Note for English speakers Also a counter for portions served on plates. 컵 ko keop a cup, a glass Note for English speakers A loanword, and the object. The counter of lesson 5.3 is a different word and is what you use when ordering. 주문하다 ko jumunhada to order Note for English speakers A noun plus the verb for doing. In a small restaurant you would simply name the dish and add the verb for giving. Hunger and taste Word Meaning Notes 배고프다 ko baegopeuda to be hungry Note for English speakers Built from the word for stomach plus an adjective, so Korean says that the stomach is empty. Its opposite is the phrase for being full met in lesson 3.13. 달다 ko dalda to be sweet Note for English speakers An adjective, and the source of the adverb for sweetly. It is used of people as English uses "sweet" as well. Two obvious words are missing from these tables and their absence is deliberate. The corpus this course draws on has no attested sentence containing the word for kimchi in its food sense, nor any containing the adjective for spicy, which for Korean food is a serious gap. Rather than compose a sentence and present it as evidence, this lesson leaves both out, and the conversation lesson on ordering food will bring them back when it has so