So you’re meeting some person for the first time, probably Korean, how you
introduce yourself? How do you tell him where you come from? Let’s look at the
sample session below.
Hello
Annyeonghaseyo
안녕하세요
My
name is James.
Jae
ireumeun James ipnida.
제 이름은 제임스 입니다.
I
am from America.
Jeonun
Miguk eseo wasseupnida.
저는 미국에서 왔습니다
Pleased
to see (meet) you.
Bangapsumnida
반갑습니다.
What we have
above is an example of an American, introducing himself. When you want to State
your name, you can either say:
Jae
ireumeun (Your name) ipnida.
제 이름은 (……..) 입니다.
Or
(Your name) ipnida.
(………) 입니다.
The first means “my name is …”, while the second is simply “I am …”,
followed by your name.
제 (Jae)
is the first person pronoun
corresponding to the English’s “my”.
이름은 (Ireumeun)
means name.
입니다 (ipnida) is a formal way of saying ‘is’/’am’.
Now when you want to State where you come from,
I
am from America.
Jeoneun
Miguk eseo wasseupnida.
저는 미국에서 왔습니다
저는 (Jeonun) is the humble singular first person pronoun that
corresponds to English’s “I”.
미국 (Miguk) means America in Korean.
에서 (Eseo) is a location
particle that corresponds to ‘at’/’from’
왔습니다 (wasseupnida) has to be broken down in order to be understood fairly. Sentence
structure and grammatical constructions involving this phrase would be
discussed in later lessons, I’ll just try to make it simple for now. For now
all we need to understand it is made up of the English word come and a
conjugation. Because of Korea’s sentence structure it might sound confusing, so
let us look at a literal meaning.
Jeoneun
Miguk eseo wasseupnida.
저는 미국에서 왔습니다
I American from came
Looks pretty
skewed, right?? It’s alright; you’ll all get to understand this sentence
structure later on. Let’s just concentrate on introducing ourselves in Korean.
VOCABULARY FOR
THE LESSON
VOCABULARY
|
ROMANIZATION
|
MEANING
|
안녕하세요
|
Annyeonghaseyo
|
Hello/Hi
|
제
|
Jae
|
My
|
이름은
|
ireumeun
|
Name
|
저는
|
Jeonun
|
I
|
미국
|
Miguk
|
America/USA
|
에서
|
Eseo
|
At/from
(location particle)
|
반갑습니다.
|
Bangapseunmida
|
Pleased
to meet you
|
뭐?
|
Mwŏ?
|
"what?"
|
위
|
Wi
|
Above
|
왜?
|
wae ?
|
"why?"
|
배
|
Pae
|
"boat"
|
우유
|
u-yu
|
"milk"
|
야!
|
Ya
|
"hey"
|
TEST
Practice introducing yourself with the
following words, all of which are names
of countries.
1. 멕시코 (Mexico)
2. 스페인 (Spain)
3. 이탈리아 (Italy)
4. 케냐 (Kenya)
5. Nigeria
For the 5th, I need the
Hangeul transcription, used in a sentence. Hint: its written just the way it
sounds.
