• Introduce yourself in the formal speech style
• Share your personal information and background
• Ask and answer questions about essential personal information

How do you introduce yourself in Korean? What information would you share with someone you are meeting for the first time?

Now let’s read these two dialogues. What are they talking about?

Jina just saw Isaac at the school cafeteria and started having a brief conversation. Listen to the dialogue and answer the following questions in Korean.

1. How does Jina know Isaac?
2. Introduce Jina based on the dialogue. Write as much as you heard.
3. Introduce Isaac based on the dialogue. Write as much as you heard.
4. What did Jina suggest and how did Isaac respond?

Helpful Vocabulary
동갑: same age

You work part-time at the Office of International Students at your college as a Korean-English bilingual editor. Your assigned task is to update its multilingual website. Translate and edit, in English, the self-introduction text written by Jihoon, one of the exchange students at your school.

교환 학생 이지훈
안녕하십니까?  제 이름은 이지훈이라고 하고, 스무 살입니다.  한국 서울에서 왔습니다. 한국에서는 서연대학에서 경제학을 전공하고 있습니다.  올해에 3학년이 되는데 이번 학기에 교환학생으로 와서 영어를 배우고 있습니다.  앞으로 1년 동안 친구들도 많이 사귀고 싶고, 다양한 수업들도 들어보고 싶습니다.  그리고 아시아 문화 동아리에도 가입해서 활동하기 시작했습니다.  한국에 돌아가서 졸업 후에 무역회사에서 일할 수 있으면 좋겠습니다.

Helpful Vocabulary
다양하다 to be various	활동하다 to act, to work, to be active
무역회사 trade company	가입하다 to join (clubs, etc.)

add h5p

New Member Recruitment

The Korean Cultural Center in your local community is recruiting members. You are a board member of this organization and assigned to conduct interviews. Meet two member candidates and ask them questions. Then present an introduction about each person you interviewed to the board members.

Reflecting on what you learned from Books 1 and 2, you should notice that there are 3 basic kinds of verb/adjective endings:

(1) Those that take the –아/어 stem (usually memorized with –아/어 as part of the ending), such as –아/어서, –아/어요.  We will refer to these endings using the 어–based version (e.g. –어서).  You will need to remember that the initial –아/어 harmonizes with the preceding verb root’s vowel.
(2) Those that start with –으, which drops out sometimes (e.g. –(으)면, –(으)니까, –(은)데).   We will not put the 으 in parentheses henceforth – you will need to remember when 으 drops out.
(3) those that start with a consonant (e.g.  –고 나서, –지만, –네, –는데). Some endings are final and come at the end of the sentence (e.g. –어요, –네, –지), and others connect clauses (e.g. –고 나서, –으니까).  We’ll call the former type sentence endings and the latter type connectors. There is a set pattern to how each type of verb or adjective conjugates, meeting different endings and connectors. Fill in the chart and see what generalizations you can make.  See what patterns you have learned well, have intuitions about, OR… need to practice some more! Read the following sentences, rewrite the connectors and endings used in the underlined parts, and label them as (아/어–type), (으–type), or (Consonant–type).

1. 오늘은 날씨가 나빠서 하루 종일 집에 있을 거예요.
2. 여름에는 비행기 표가 비싸니까 봄이나 가을에 여행을 하자.
3. 시애틀은 겨울에 춥지 않지만 비가 많이 와요.
4. 다리가 아프기 때문에 더 걸을 수 없어요.
5. 경치가 너무 좋네요!
6. 한국어를 잘 하고 싶으면 매일 한국어 연습을 해야 돼요.
7. 내일 시간이 있을 때 웹에서 싼 비행기 표를 알아 볼게요.
8. 겨울에 알라스카에 가는데 너무 춥지 않을까요?
9. 내일파티에가서재미있게놀래요!

첫 만남 FIRST MEETING

If you are studying Korean, you must be planning to meet Korean people and introduce yourself. What do they want to know about you – and when – and how will you interact and get to know them? These are difficult questions to answer, but a few cultural differences should be considered.

Most of the same basic questions will be asked and answered during introductions; your name, hometown, college or university and major, and hobbies. You may be more surprised about how directly or suddenly you are asked about your marital and dating status or age. These points are relevant to determine your place in the social hierarchy that dictates how you should interact with others. They also provide topics for conversation.

You might be asked:
무슨 띠세요? What is your sign?
00000(in the Chinese zodiac, where the signs are arranged in a cycle of twelve years)
– 몇 학번이세요? /학번이 어떻게 되세요? What (college entering) class are you? or What is your student number?

The next point to determine might be whether or not you are married, partly because general terms of address (아줌마 and 아저씨) are based at least partly on marital status.  It is acceptable to date in public and to talk about dating, but expectations about marriage are still relatively conservative – one is expected to marry (the opposite sex) by a certain age, and have children.To round out an understanding of your social standing, it will be important to know your schooling background.

– 학교는 어디 나오셨어요?/다니셨어요?   What college did you attend?
– 전공이 어떻게 되세요? 0000000000000-What was your major?
– 실례지만 무슨 일 하세요? 00000000-0_-Where do you work?

Once you have started to get to know a person, you will determine together how you will address each other, starting out with the level of formality that your ages and stations in life dictate, and moving to less formal speech styles as you become more friendly. This is a tricky social tango in Korean, but here are some examples to get you started thinking about it (you may want to discuss these with a language partner or other Koreans)”A professor will use _____________ while teaching, but in office hours, with an individual student, might use ________________.Colleagues (at a bank, for example), will use __________________ at work, _______________ during meetings but then _______________ if they go out for drinks after work.A younger student will use ____________ toward an older student, but the older student might answer using ________________.

There is a system of asking to speak more casually as well.  It may be surprising that it is the socially LOWER person in a relationship who will suggest that the HIGHER person speak more casually or easily: 말씀 놓으세요./말씀 편하게 하세요. It may not be appropriate to ask this during the first meeting, but these days it is generally welcomed as a respectful gesture; it is as though the lower person is simultaneously humbling him/herself and being friendly (You needn’t speak formally with me; please do whatever is easiest for you).

In a relationship between peers becoming friends, one would say 우리 말 놓을까요? /우리 말 놓자, at which point one might still continue to mix polite and plain forms for some time. If you don’t really like a person, you can use language to show this and maintain a more distanced relationship by continuing to use –요!

Of course it all depends on the individual and the social situation –– some people have a tendency to be very friendly, casual, intimate or blunt and others more arm’s–length. At the same time, it is generally NOT acceptable to speak in 반말 in an office situation, no matter how friendly you might be outside the workplace.1r