7.1 My Day — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read twenty consecutive sentences of Korean without a dictionary, because every content word in them has appeared in a lesson you have done. Follow a first-person account through a day, from who the writer is to going to bed: 저는 학생이에요. to 잘 자요. Recognise in running text the endings you learned one at a time: the topic, the object, the two locations, the progressive and the past. Answer seven questions about a text in English, without translating it first. Say what a controlled composition is and what this one is made of. Prerequisites : 6.6, and everything before it. This is the first text in the course that is meant to be read straight through rather than studied line by line, and nothing in it is new. A first text in a new language has a problem. Real Korean prose uses words a beginner has not met, so it cannot be read; a text written for beginners usually uses sentences nobody would write, so reading it teaches the wrong habits. This course takes a third route. The text on the next page is a controlled composition : it is arranged for this lesson, but every sentence in it is quoted, one by one, from the corpus the whole course draws on. Nothing has been composed. What has been done is selection and ordering, so that twenty attested sentences fall into the shape of an account of one day. That method has a cost and it is worth naming. The text does not flow the way a paragraph written by one person flows: each sentence is somebody else's, and the joins show. What it buys is that every line is Korean that a Korean actually wrote, so nothing you learn from it will have to be unlearned. Word by word The text divided into its blocks, with the job of each one. Read the middle column across, then read the Korean again without it. Korean Block by block English 저는 학생이에요. 저는 as for me, topic · 학생이에요 noun and copula I am a student. 저는 호주 사람이에요. 호주 country · 사람이에요 person and copula I'm Australian. 저는 한국에서 살고 있어요. 한국에서 place of activity · 살고 있어요 progressive I live in Korea. 저는 7년 동안 한국에서 살았어요. 7년 동안 duration · 살았어요 past I lived in Korea for seven years. 저는 항상 바빠요. 항상 adverb · 바빠요 adjective as predicate I'm busy all the time. 걸어서 왔어요. 걸어서 causal connector · 왔어요 past I came on foot. 나는 도서관에서만 공부해요. 도서관에서만 place plus "only" · 공부해요 verb I only study in the library. 나는 한국어를 공부해요. 한국어를 object · 공부해요 verb I'm learning Korean. 한국어는 쉬워요. 한국어는 topic · 쉬워요 irregular adjective Korean is easy. 우리 빵을 먹어요. 우리 subject, unmarked · 빵을 object · 먹어요 verb We eat bread. 음악을 들어요. 음악을 object · 들어요 irregular verb I listen to music. 음악을 좋아해요. 좋아해요 transitive verb, not the adjective I like music. 사무실에서 일하고 있어요. 사무실에서 place of activity · 일하고 있어요 progressive I am working in my office. 친구를 만나서 영화를 봐요. 만나서 causal connector · 봐요 contracted polite form I meet my friend and watch a movie. 영화를 좋아해요. 영화를 object · 좋아해요 verb I love movies. 우리는 저녁을 먹고 있어요. 우리는 topic · 저녁을 object · 먹고 있어요 progressive We're having dinner. 배가 불러요. 배가 subject · 불러요 irregular adjective I'm full. 저는 여행을 좋아해요! 여행을 object · 좋아해요 verb I like travel! 나중에 봐요. 나중에 time with the time ending · 봐요 verb See you later. 잘 자요. 잘 adverb · 자요 contracted polite form Good night. Six things in that table were taught in six different lessons, and here they are in one paragraph: the topic ending from 3.2, the object ending and the two location endings from 3.3, the progressive from 3.6, the past marker from 3.9, the causal connector from 3.14, and five irregular stems from 3.16. Reading is where the separate lessons stop being separate. One line repays a second look. In 우리 빵을 먹어요. the subject carries no ending at all, which lesson 3.2 said was normal in speech: a bare noun is neutral, and the sentence is perfectly clear without the marking. Compare it with 우리는 저녁을 먹고 있어요. four lines later, where the same word carries the topic ending because the sentence is now about what we, as opposed to anybody else, are doing. Full translation An English translation of the whole text, made for this course and kept close to the original. The numbers are the paragraph numbers of the original text, so you can move between the two. I am a student. I'm Australian. I live in Korea. I lived in Korea for seven years. I'm busy all the time. I came on foot. I only study in the library. I'm learning Korean. Korean is easy. We eat bread. I listen to music. I like music. I am working in my office. I meet my friend and watch a movie. I love movies. We're having dinner. I'm full. I like travel! See you later. Good night. Questions on the text Answer in English, without translating the whole text first. The point of the exercise is to read for sense rather than to decode. What is the writer's nationality, and where do they live now? How long have they been there, and how do you know that the answer is about the past? Where do they study, and what does the ending on that word add that "in the library" does not? Name two things the writer says they like. Which of the twenty sentences has a subject that carries no ending at all? The text has two sentences about the same meal. Find them and say which is in the progressive. Count the sentences with no subject block. What does English have to supply in each? Words in this text Nothing here is new. These six are the words the text leans on hardest, and each is given with what it is doing in this particular passage. Read them cold. Cover the meanings and read these aloud: 학생 , 도서관 , 사무실 , 여행 , 항상 , 나중에 . Word Meaning Notes 학생 ko haksaeng a student What it is doing here Introduced in lesson 3.5 with the copula, and used here in the same construction, which is how a Korean opens a self-description. 도서관 ko doseogwan a library What it is doing here From lesson 3.3, and here with two endings stacked on it, the place of activity and the restricting one, in the order lesson 3.4 gave. 사무실 ko samusil an office What it is doing here From lesson 3.14, and here with the place-of-activity ending because working is an activity rather than a state. 여행