Grammar and spelling checker

I found this site recently --> Korean grammar and spelling checker (run by 부산대학교!)



You type or paste in your text, click the "검사하기" button, and then it corrects your errors for you! (Followed by bewildering and sometimes overly long explanations.)



If there are no errors it'll say "문법 및 철자 오류가 발견되지 않았습니다."

Some words that I looked up:

검사 check, inspect
맞춤법 spelling
철자 spelling (also)
정보 information
오류 error
유사 similar
지적 point out, indicate
의견 feedback

Korean spelling can be so tricky. And spacing. (Spacing gives me fits.) I hope this will be useful!

당근 쏭 (attack of the singing carrots)

My daughter Kate thinks this video is highly amusing.

I was going to say that I still can't quite understand all of the second part, but through my amazing google-fu I was able to find the lyrics online:

나 보고 싶니? (당근)
나 생각나니? (당근)
I love you You love me (당근당근당근)
나 좋아하니? (당근)
나 사랑하니? (당근)
I love you You love me (당근당근당근)

너 변하지마 (당근)
언제까지나 (당근)
좋아해 좋아해 (당근당근당근)
늘 행복해요 (당근)
늘 즐거워요 (당근)
사랑해 사랑해 (당근~쏭)

때로는 짜증나고 때로는 힘들어도
너에곁에 언제나 웃고 있는 날 생각해
때로는 슬퍼지고 때로는 외로워도
너의곁에 언제나 함께하는 나를 생각해

짜증-irritated, annoyed (the only word I didn't know). Dictionary.com's translator actually rendered this as "sucks." Seems like a useful word.

This guy points out that "당근" is also slang for "of course," which hadn't occurred to me. I love you! Of course!

Now I have this song stuck in my head.

추석

추석 falls on September 22nd this year. I usually make 떡국 for 설날 but I don't really have anything to do for 추석. I was only in Korea for one 추석, and nobody invited us over, so we just went over to the Elders' house and had a picnic outside their apartment. (In contrast, I think we got fed about three times on 설날). The 한인 지부 here is having an activity, but it's going to be late because there's something else going on this week.

한글 fonts

I found all of these at the Gallery of Unicode Fonts, but it looks like some of the download links are no longer working, so I just bundled everything up into a zip file. (I don't anticipate any problem with this, but I'll be happy to take it down if anyone objects.)

Click here to download the zip file.



Some of these fonts also include 한자:



The HY series fonts are a little unusual--in some programs they show up in the font menu with the 한글 titles, and in some programs (like Photoshop) they show up with romanized titles. I also included the name of the actual font file in parentheses. In my font folder (Windows XP) they have 한글 names, but when I copied them into another folder to zip them up, the names all changed. (Tricksy!)

The UnYetgul font is missing some syllables.

Korean ebooks overview

What I've found out, in a nutshell:

Kyobo and Yes24 have ePub and PDF format books available, but they use a Korean DRM (digital rights management) that only works with certain devices.

Book2 and Nuut use Adobe DRM, which will work with many ereaders.

I believe the Nook can display Korean if you add a Korean font. They might work on the Sony ereader as well.

ePub books can be converted to read on a Kindle, but it involves stripping the DRM, which is illegal, so we won't talk about that. The Korean font on the Kindle 3 is really horrible, and as of now there's no font hack available. There is a font hack for the Kindle 2, so it might be possible to add a Korean font.

You can read books from any of these stores on your computer. (If, you know, you don't mind reading off a computer screen.) Kyobo and Yes24 both have their own viewers that you have to install. I wasn't able to test for Mac compatibility.



ePub book (with Adobe DRM) in Calibre viewer.

I liked the layout of Yes24 best, as far as actually finding things, but wasn't able to buy a book from them since their credit card verifier-thingy seems to be rather limited. Kyobo seems to have the most selection (and I'm a fan of Kyobo in general, having been in their stores many times). If I were really serious about Korean ebook reading I'd have to buy a reader that would work with the Korean DRM. The other stores just don't have as much available.

ebookstore vocab

Words that I looked up:

결제 billing
신용 credit
고객 customer (I swear I'd never heard this before)
제한 limits
구매시 purchase
혜택 new books (when "새책" just won't do!)
삭제 deletion
취소 cancel
추가 add
작성 create (as in "create an ID")
거주 residence
등록 register (as in 주민등록번호--citizen registration number)
환불 return
무료 free
소설 novel
단말기 terminal (used for ereader or other electronic device)

I had to call several times, too, to figure things out. Whew! Customer service Korean is not easy. (They called me 고객님. "네, 고객님...")

Korean on Kindle

I was excited to see that Amazon's new Kindle will display Korean. Just think--you can get Korean books and not have to pay shipping! How cool is that?

Then the reviews started coming back. Not good.

Here's what the Korean font looks like:



(A helpful poster on the mobileread forums uploaded it for me.)

My initial reaction was, "Yeah, that looks pretty clunky." Then I tried actually reading it. Ick. It's even worse than it looks at first glance. There's no way anyone wants to read a book in that font.

Interestingly, the Kindle page used to say "Our Kindle 3 (Latest Generation) also supports Cyrillic (such as Russian), Japanese, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), and Korean characters in addition to Latin and Greek scripts." For some reason they've taken that part out of the product description. Hmmmm.

(It does say, "Our vision for Kindle is to have every book ever written, in every language, available in 60 seconds from anywhere on earth." Ambitious. At least it says vision and not our immediate goal within the next two weeks.)

I'm thinking I'll probably get one anyway (I've been researching and drooling for several weeks), but I won't be reading any Korean books on it unless somebody comes up with a font hack.

Korea missionary blogs

Currently serving:

Sister Jessie Kate Patterson --Busan mission
Elder Elijah Reyes --Seoul mission
Sister Juline Wadsworth --Seoul mission
Sister Whitney Stevens --Busan mission (this is the link to her letters on missionsite.net--there are a few other missionaries that you can find there if you poke around.)
Elder Michael Rife --Seoul mission
Elder and Sister Bagley--Busan mission
Korea Daejeon Mission (by Sister Furniss, current mission president's wife)

Returned:

Sister Rebecca O'Bryan --Daejeon mission
Sister Rose Hadden --Busan mission
Sister Rachel Ogilvie --Busan mission
Sister Alyssa Linford --Busan mission
Elder Joshua Bocchino --Busan mission
Elder Caleb Anderson --Busan mission
Elder Weston Wells --Busan mission
Elder Michael Harken --Busan mission
Korea Daejeon Mission (by Sister Perriton, previous mission president's wife)

I thought this was very interesting too: Doyle and Jeanne Brown, who were the medical missionaries for the Asia North area. They have a lot of really cool photos!

How to find people (LDS members) in Korea

The church has a 관리 본부 in 서울 where they have access to all the members' records in Korea. Their number is 02-2232-1441 (from North America dial 011-82-2-2232-1441)

They're open Monday-Friday 8:30-5:00 (I think) and there's a lunch hour in there somewhere, too.

I can't really understand the menu, so I just push a button at random and when somebody answers I say, "제가 미국에서 전화하는데, 혹시 회원의 주소를 알라 볼 수 있어요?" (I don't know why I've always said 주소... perhaps 연락처 would make more sense) and they switch me over to the records department.

A very nice sister named 이선리 has helped me out when I've called. The first few times she was able to give me a phone number, but then after that she said she couldn't give out a number directly, but she got my info, contacted the person, and then called me back. There were only a couple of times when she wasn't able to pinpoint the right person because the name was too common. (They also don't keep the records anymore if the person has moved outside of Korea.)

If you know what ward the person lives in, I've also had good luck calling the mission offices and then talking to the missionaries and getting a number off their membership lists.

서울 선교부: (02) 734-3653
대전 선교부: (042) 628-1482
부산 선교부: (051) 552-7011

(Leave the 0 off the area code when calling internationally)

There is a list here of all the congregations in Korea (and Korean congregations outside of Korea). If you click on "소개" some of them even have pictures. Some of the info might be a bit outdated. I know the address for the Korean branch in Washington is wrong.

You know you served in Korea when...

I thought this would be fun to start us off! Add yours in the comments. :)

환영합니다!

Welcome to our group Korean study blog! Feel free to post anything about Korean, or about Korea in general!